


Borrowed Robes

by Prochytes



Category: Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian, The Authority, Torchwood
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A plot from outside Creation has more than one universe in its sights. But the finest minds of half a dozen Earths are on the case. And they have coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Borrowed Robes

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Torchwood to 2x01 "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", BtVS to the end of S6, Harry Potter to "The Half-Blood Prince", The Authority to "Outer Dark", and "Alias" to the end of S4. Originally posted on LJ in 2008.

1\. The Wrong Coat

 _In which Marshall Flinkman recoils in surprise._

As a child, Marshall Flinkman had nursed two great enthusiasms. The first of these had been for “those electric boxes with the keyboards” which Flinkman Senior, with typical accuracy, had confidently predicted would “never amount to much”. The second, however, had been for detective stories.

His taste had been catholic, embracing Raymond Chandler and Jacques Futrelle with equal ardour. His special love, though, had been for those tales where some small but evocative incongruity was the loose thread on which the hero pulled to unravel the puzzle. The Second Stain. The Speckled Band. The Queer Feet.

The Wrong Coat.

It was a bright Sunday lunchtime in L. A. when Marshall first beheld the Wrong Coat. He was sitting in a park, feeding the ducks. The irony of someone in his particular line of work actually doing this was not lost upon him, but he found it therapeutic, all the same. Going post-modern seemed, right now, a better alternative to going postal.

“You’re certainly letting that baguette know who’s boss.”

The voice was English, female, and a touch hesitant. Marshall looked up with a start from the bread-stick which he had been vigorously wringing as he indulged the fantasy that it was the neck of Agent Bradley Saunders. In doing so, he saw the Wrong Coat.

The Wrong Coat was being worn by an Asian woman in her early thirties, who had taken a seat on the bench beside him. She was short and slim, and the slightness of her frame was largely responsible for the Wrongness of the Coat. It was a heavy, military jacket, many sizes too big for its current wearer. The sleeve flopped down almost to her fingers as she gestured at the bread in Marshall’s hand.

“Blowing off a bit of steam?”

“I guess.” Marshall took a swig from his water-bottle, and slapped at the back of his neck, where he had felt a sting. Early for mosquitoes; just his luck. He continued with uncharacteristic asperity: “Do you know why I like ducks? Ducks’ll appreciate anyone who gives them food. And the chances of them telling you to write eighteen status reports like a glorified office-boy when you should be doing… other stuff are small to non-existent.”

APO had recently undergone internal restructuring. Which had brought the customary fall-out of this happy event: longer hours; a slightly more garrulous job description; and no pay-rise. It had also brought the elevation of Agent Bradley Saunders to the giddy heights of Marshall’s line manager.

If Agent Bradley Saunders had any understanding of computers, engineering, cryptography, or information synthesis, then Agent Bradley Saunders did a great job of hiding it. He was, however, copiously well-informed about Ergonomic Management Structures and Rightness of Fit. This seemed mostly to take the form of how Rightly Marshall was Fitted to spend hours drafting mendacious memos to the Feds about the nature of APO’s activities, while R&D languished unregarded.

No such details, of course, would pass Marshall’s lips in casual colloquy with a stranger. When you ran tech support for a Black Ops division of the CIA, conversations about work were best left in the realm of generalities. Without an exit visa.

But it was harmless to masquerade as a harassed desk-jockey. Hey, it would be suspicious if he were a white-collar drone in the U. S. of A. who _wasn’t_ pissed at his boss. The Englishwoman smiled, a little nervously. Marshall picked up the vibe that she was not someone to whom chit-chat came easy.

“Drafting pointless memos. Rings several bells. I think that we are going to get on rather well, Agent Flinkman.”

Marshall’s lack of much in the way of actual field experience meant that he had seldom felt that moment of vertigo as the bottom dropped out of a hitherto innocuous conversation. But a little went a long way, and he was feeling it again now. He swigged at his water, and fiddled nervously with his collar-button.

“I don’t recall mentioning my name. And I don’t know where you’re getting this ‘agent’ business from. Er. I mean, do I look like James Bond? Well, maybe I could pull off Woody Allen in that spoof one – which sucked by the way, David Niven or not – but still…”

“Your discretion does you credit, Mr. Flinkman,” spoke another voice, “but for all that, it must needs yield place to celerity.”

Marshall looked behind him to catch a glance at the speaker. The newcomer was a middle-aged man, almost as small as the woman fidgeting beside Marshall, but Caucasian, and distinctly less easy on the eye. A pale, reptilian gaze stared out from beneath sparse hair. His dress was neat and formal, but otherwise unremarkable.

“He’s right.” The inhabitant of the Coat put out a restraining hand as Marshall tried to rise. “We have something very important to tell you.”

“We do at that.” The small man nodded. “The…” His pale eyes widened. “The Diving Plover,” he resumed in a cold, quiet voice, “is not to be found in California.”

“Huh?”

“Already? They’re here _already_?” The woman tried to pull Marshall to his feet. “We have to move. Now.”

“Why?”

“Because of _that_.” She pointed at one of the web-footed recipients of Marshall’s largesse, slightly larger and different in colouration from its fellows. The air shimmered. For a moment, it seemed to Marshall as though he were sitting in a court-room and reality, under cross-examination, had just changed its testimony.

It had looked like a duck. It had quacked like a duck.

It wasn’t a duck.

2\. The Problem of Cell 47

 _In which Agent Flinkman discovers the perils of geeks bearing gifts._

“I think you ought… to know,” Marshall wheezed, “whatever you’ve been told… I don’t really covert much myself. I’m more the cause of covert in others. Hence… no busting out of guns or elite martial arts skills at this point.”

Joe Public was doing the screaming and panicking civilian thing, running away in undisciplined fashion in all directions. Unlike Marshall, who was a pro, and so was running away with dogged determination and a fixed velocity. He chanced a glance back over his shoulder.

“What the hell is that thing, anyway?”

“Long story,” the woman gasped. She looked in a bad way. Sweat pasted her black bangs to her forehead as she strained to match Marshall’s pace under the weight and bulk of her cumbersome coat (why hadn’t she just dumped it?). Her colleague saved all his breath for locomotion.

“But it’s the size of a person! And those _teeth_! How did it make itself look like a _duck_?”

“It was… glamoured. A disguise, to let it get close to you without, well, all this.”

“It’s gaining on us.”

“I know. Is that a main road?”

“Huh? Yeah.”

“Great. Follow my lead.”

The woman darted straight out into the midst of the cars. The next few seconds featured some _prestissimo_ orchestration of man, woman, Big Pursuing Bipedal Thing With Teeth, brake, hooter, and expletive which Marshall profoundly hoped never to experience again as a participant. The woman’s breathless voice somehow rose above the cacophony:

“You see, something’s making things like that stronger, tougher, and smarter, but you have to be really smart – comparatively speaking – …”

The Thing, intent upon its prey, did not spot the oncoming lorry until it was too late.

“… to handle L. A. traffic.”

*****

Marshall, heart-rate finally slowing to normalcy, peered out of an alley at the clean-up. From what the lorry-driver was saying to the street-cops, he seemed to be under the impression that he had hit a deer. Anyone hoping for a haunch of venison road-kill, Marshall reflected, was in for a surprise. Behind him, his two new acquaintances were speaking in subdued voices.

“I’m not up to this, Stephen. Who am I fooling? Pretending I know what to do. Playing dress-up.”

“Hush, my dear.”

“There could have been deaths in the pile-up I caused. Do you know what I would have said to my people, if they had been that irresponsible?”

“I have a tolerable store of profanity, as befits one so long associated with the Service. I believe that I could hazard a guess...”

“In the Hub, all that I can crash is a computer.”

“And you are not in your Hub now, so you will do what you must. I desire that you will not top the Hamlet, my dear, and sickly resolution o’er with the pale cast of thought.”

“I suppose so…”

“Capital.” The man turned to Marshall. “Do you see anything of interest, Mr. Flinkman?”

“Not really. Well, unless you count the four guys with semi-automatics and flak jackets…”

“UP AGAINST THE WALL, NOW!! YOU TOO, LADY, I WON’T ASK TWICE…”

“… but they’re with me.”

*****

Jack Bristow was not best pleased to be called into APO on a Sunday. What he saw when he entered Command Centre only fuelled his displeasure.

“Agent Saunders…”

“Yes, sir?”

“Why do we have two detainees in the same cell?”

“They don’t know that it’s under surveillance.” Agent Saunders pointed at a monitor. “We hoped that they might spill more to one another while they were waiting for someone to show.”

“Did they?”

“Well… no. The girl talked to the older guy about the Incas. He told her about _Pezophaps solitarius_.”

“About what?”

“We think that it’s a kind of bird, sir.”

“I see.” Jack’s gaze riveted itself to the monitor. “Is that MARSHALL going in there?”

“Well yes, sir, you see…”

“ALONE?”

“They said that they would only talk to Agent Flinkman. By himself.”

“And you decided to play along with this, Agent Saunders?”

“With all due respect, sir, there are three armed guards outside the door to that cell. The two of them are what, two hundred and fifty pounds between them, soaking wet? Even Agent Flinkman isn’t going to be overpowered by that pair before he gets back-up. We subjected both of them to full-spectrum scans as soon as we got them in. Neither of them was carrying any form of electronic, mechanical, chemical, or biological agent.”

“Full-spectrum scans.” Jack sighed. “Interrogation went a lot more smoothly when we had less electrons and more electrodes.”

Agent Saunders made a sound which Jack was fairly sure was meant to sound like an obsequious chuckle to his ears and a giggle at the outdatedness of the Bristow-saurus to everyone else’s, and continued:

“Agent Flinkman made some of the same points you did, sir, but I decided that it was time-critical that they were made to talk. Some aspects of what Agent Flinkman said when we brought them in were… unusual. To say the least.”

“OK, we’ll play it your way. For now.” Jack leaned in closer to the monitor. “Let’s hear what they have to say for themselves.”

*****

“Hi again,” said Marshall. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The young woman and the older man stared back at him. Neither was easy to read. “I’m sorry that my people had to go all, like, _blitzkrieg_ on your asses. I think that you two want to help me, somehow. But the fact of the matter is, you two _know_ about us. That tends to make espionage types a little jumpy.”

“Your response was quite understandable.” The man regarded Marshall thoughtfully. “How, if I may ask, did you summon your allies? You did not leave our sight at any point.”

“It was his collar-button, I bet,” said the woman. “You have some sort of transmitter in it, don’t you? That was why you started fiddling with it when I said your name.”

Marshall nodded. “Uh-huh. It’s a distress beacon. Designed it myself, in fact.”

“That, if you don’t mind my saying so, is seriously neat.” The woman leaned forward, eyes aglow. “It’s so small! I don’t think that even I could…” She caught herself abruptly.

“…make one like that?” said Marshall. He stood, and began to pace up and down. The woman eyed him warily. “There was a look on your face, when we were talking. Sort of pensive, but harried? Like you kept expecting someone to ask you something? I was wracking my brains for why that look was so familiar. And then I remembered where I see it.”

Marshall stopped, and turned back to look at her. “In the mirror. You’re like me, aren’t you? Someone’s little tame techie.”

The woman flinched, but said nothing.

“You might as well admit it now, you know. You really aren’t going anywhere.”

“Aren’t I?” The woman smiled a bright and genuine smile, the first that Marshall had seen from her. “Is that a _challenge_? Do you think that you’ve built a cell I can’t escape from?”

“This is one of the most secure rooms in one of the most secure installations on the planet.”

“We were hoping that you would say that.” She cocked her head on one side. “Sleep.”

The older man was already in motion, and caught Marshall under the shoulders as his eyes rolled up and his legs buckled. The woman darted around the table and then (or so it seemed to the watchers in the Command Centre) peeled back the skin at the base of his neck, to remove a capsule. This she threw at the door, a split second before the guards outside, at Jack’s barked command, attempted to burst in. And failed.

“Door.”

“What the hell is that?” Jack whispered as he stared at the screen. A line of light, thin as a paper-cut, had sliced the air in Cell 47. It widened into a prismatic oblong, about the size of a doorway, into which the older captive deftly pulled the unconscious Marshall. Both men disappeared.

The woman in the absurd coat, now alone in the cell, was scrutinizing the walls and ceilings, and whispering under her breath.

 _“wherewouldtheyputthecameraswherewouldtheyputtheahyesofcourse…”_

She looked straight up into the camera, and gave it a small, tight smile.

“Hi. In case you’re wondering, what I just did sealed this room pretty thoroughly. Even with power tools, your people won’t be getting in here any time soon. By then I’ll be long gone.

“Agent Flinkman is safe. Well, safer with us than he is with you. There are… things coming for him, but they can’t reach him where we’ve taken him. Not yet, anyway.

“When I go, the door I’ve opened here will shut, but it will leave a weak point. You won’t be able to follow us – but the things we are fighting might, if they could get into the room. For Mr. Flinkman’s sake and your own, I’m begging you not to let them.

“As for what’s coming… well, I hooked up a computer on a time-delay to upload all the intel we have on the enemy to your mainframe. It should be with you within the hour; use it well. Please believe me when I say I’m very sorry that it has to be this way.

“Good-bye. And good luck.”

The woman darted, coat flapping, into the oblong of light. It narrowed again to a paper-cut behind her, but did not altogether disappear.

*****

“Sir?”

Jack Bristow turned. One of the new recruits at the monitors gulped nervously.

“Well, son? Spit it out.”

“Sir, you really need to see what we’re picking up on the external monitors…”

Jack looked. His jaw tightened.

“I’m ordering lock-down. Get tactical mobilized and reporting to me at the double. I want people analysing what the hell just happened in Cell 47, and someone keeping an eye on incoming data in case Little Miss Pied Piper was on the level. Anyone with a spare moment can go find Agent Saunders a sword to fall on.”

3\. A Romance of Many Dimensions

 _In which Agent Flinkman looks for answers and (much to his chagrin) finds them._

The surface beneath his fingers was almost aggressively uninteresting. He had been expecting the smoothness of stone, or the crumble of soil, or even a modest carpet. All he was getting was tactile beige.

Still, when you’ve just come to in an unknown locale, you can do a lot worse than uninteresting. Marshall opened his eyes.

He was lying in the corner of what seemed to be a small room. All his clothes were present and accounted for. His jacket had been taken off and bundled so as to cushion his head. Marshall sat up, and looked around.

Interesting had just been waiting its turn.

He was sure that he was in a small room. Beyond its dimensions, though, he would have been hard-pressed to confirm or deny very much about it. The colour of the walls, for example, was utterly beyond his ability to apprehend; the more he tried to concentrate on them, the more his attention slipped away. It was as if corner-of-the-eye had set up camp all over his field of vision.

Marshall took a couple of deep breaths. OK. Lone Agent in Hostile Territory. But that was cool. After all, he had the experience of very nearly several actual missions to guide him. Um. What would Sydney do in a situation like this? Marshall reviewed the possibilities, winnowing out the ones that involved kickboxing, fluency in Swedish, or wigs. He decided to make with the reconnaissance.

The room did not seem to have a door. At least, not all of the time. So Marshall left through the door-way. Old riddle, of course, but one which, in his present surroundings, had an odd sort of point. It was hard to determine what bounded what in this place: whether the doorframe defined the hole in the room that was the door-way or the door defined a wholly empty space around itself. Maybe it was both at once.

Marshall stole along what felt like the _idea_ of a corridor. Presently, it reached a junction. Both branches turned round corners after a short distance. It was not possible to see at once where each ended.

From the right, Marshall thought that he heard the sound of someone speaking, and of running water. From the left he heard only billowing and a slow, insistent susurration. Better to take his chances with the voice.

Beyond the corner, the corridor opened up into a large room. The chamber itself shared the curiously indeterminate quality of the other architecture. What it contained did not.

The room was dominated by an altar. Candle-light flirted with its angular façade. A huge prayer-wheel flanked it on either side.

In front of the altar knelt a young woman. She was short and slight like the jay-walking techie with the Coat, but pale-skinned and red-haired. Marshall could not see her face, which was turned towards the altar.

“Eryishon, Endless One, my obeisance to you. Through thee I know the might of Might. For all A, let B equal cosine Z open bracket…”

The prayer-wheels stuttered into motion. Tears of something like mercury trickled down the altar’s face, to patter and pool in a hollow at its feet. The red-haired woman continued to recite. Finally, after over a minute, she came to an end:

“…over F factorial. Amen. Shantih Shantih Shantih. Whatever.” The prayer-wheels juddered to a halt. The woman seemed to study them intently, frowned, and tapped away at what Marshall could now see was a lap-top on the floor in front of her.

“Mr. Flinkman. Hi.” Without turning around, the woman raised her head. “Tosh said that you should be up and on the prowl about now.”

“Hi.” Marshall shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “Um, miss… If you don’t mind my asking a personal question…”

“Shoot.”

“Are you a houri?”

“Huh?”

“This place… the religious symbolism… your computer… Am I dead? Is this Techie Valhalla?”

The woman giggled. “I’m no houri. I’d have to be _way_ more cleavagy, for one thing, and I’m darned sure that there’s a minimum height requirement. Houris aren’t Norse, either.”

“I can afford to be ecumenical. It’s my funeral.”

“Well, you’re not dead. Be with you in a moment; I just have to finish something.” The woman craned over her lap-top. “It’s good that you found your way here so quickly. The topology of this place has been playing up a bit. Of course, Tosh maintains…”

“Tosh?”

“Toshiko. The woman who brought you here. Small lady; big coat? Tosh believes that this place’s internal dimensions are infinite. I don’t. We’ve been fighting it out for ages.” The red-head chuckled to herself. “At last, a foewoman worthy of my steel. She thinks that she has me on the ropes in the tenth and I’ve got nothing left, but there’s some cutting-edge work on Hilbert Space methods up my sleeve which is going to knock her clean out of the ring.”

“Doesn’t anyone know how big this place is for sure, then?”

“We don’t. We just built it.” The woman seemed to be frowning. “Sorry for the sports metaphors, by the way. It’s conceivable that I sublimate aggression into intellectual over-achievement.”

“Uh-huh.” Marshall started edging back into the corridor. And yelped, as he encountered something sharp, metal, and pointed.

It was a pair of garden shears, held by a teenaged girl who seemed to be experiencing the Tunguska Event of all bad hair days. Marshall eyed her warily.

“Hello,” she said, “are you Mister Flinkman?”

“Yeah.” (Does she know that her hair looks like that? Am I supposed to mention it? Is this some kind of psychometric test?)

“Fantastic. It’s great to meet you.” The girl stuck out her shear-less hand, which Marshall shook. “I tried pruning the Map,” she shouted to the woman at the altar.

“How did it go?”

“It’s like a mangrove swamp now, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to use a machete instead.”

“I think that Stephen put one in the Armoury.”

“Great. See you later, Mr. Flinkman.”

The girl disappeared around the corner. Marshall scratched his chin.

“Is she, er, one of your operatives too?” he asked. The woman was clicking down the lid on her lap-top.

“Well, we don’t really go in for ‘operatives’ as such here. But, yeah, I guess that you could say she is.”

“She seems very young.”

“She is. But she can look after herself. She’s a witch.”

“A witch. I see. She thinks that she’s a witch. Great. And this doesn’t bother you at all, does it? Her, er, ‘witchcraft’?”

The red-haired woman turned. Marshall took a step backwards as he saw his reflection drowning in the tar-pits of her eyes. No white; no iris; no pupil. Just black.

“No.” Beneath the complete ebony of the woman’s gaze, her smile was rueful, and almost sad. “I can’t really say it does.”

  
4\. The Phrontisterion

 _In which the forces are displayed._

“OK; that’s it. I’m leaving. Stop the world; I want to get back on.”

“It’s the eyes, huh?” The woman in front of the altar pursed her lips. “I’m sorry about that. It can’t be helped when I have to, uh, exert myself beyond a certain level. And things could be worse. I could be _veiny_ , which is not good news for a Willow. Or for much else, apart from blue cheese.”

“LET ME OUT OF THIS MAD-HOUSE RIGHT NOW!”

“This is no mad-house.”

One of the walls of the altar-room now stood in for a door-way. Three people stepped through it. One was the small techie, Tosh. The second was a dark-haired individual Marshall had not seen before. The part of his mind that had not altogether surrendered the Houri Theory noted that she was much taller and more generously built than Tosh or the red-head, but the smile on her tan face had an air of wholesome efficiency about it which did not suggest the imminence of sherbet.

The third, knocking the Theory on the head altogether, was the man Tosh had called Stephen, who had just spoken. He held Marshall’s gaze as he advanced into the room.

“You stand in no Bedlam, Agent Flinkman - quite the opposite. If I understand the work of my colleagues aright, what you see here is one of the noblest monuments that the human intellect ever raised to honour itself – and one of the most desperate. It is like the Love of Mr. Marvell – a strange cussed canting sophistical wretch to be sure, but one who could turn a phrase upon occasion – ‘begotten by Despair, upon Impossibility.’”

“Very nice. Very, um, poetic. But what the hell is this place?” Marshall gestured at the altar. “You’ve got mercury running down the walls, for chrissakes.”

“That’s not mercury,” said the tall, dark-haired woman reassuringly.

“I’m very glad to hear it. Do you know how poisonous…”

“It’s blood.”

“Huh?”

“My blood.” She smiled again. “I’m Angie, by the way.”

“Marshall. And I’d prefer that to ‘Agent Flinkman’, if it’s all the same with you. Since it looks like I’m going to be here for a while, we might as well make a start on the Stockholm Syndrome.”

“You’re a guest, not a hostage. But we’ll come to that in a moment.” The tall woman, Angie, gestured vaguely around the room. “Toshiko Sato and Dr. Stephen Maturin you met in L. A., although I guess that there wasn’t really time for introductions. The altar-girl here is Willow Rosenberg…”

“Hi again.”

“which just leaves Hermione Granger.” Angie scratched her head and frowned. “Where is Hermione, anyway?”

“She went off to trim the Map,” said the red-head, Willow. “We may have to send a search-party.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll be ok.” Angie did not sound convinced. “Anyways, what we are basically, Marshall, is a group of like-minded individuals.”

“‘Like-minded’ how?”

“We like being alive. And we’d really like to stay that way.”

“So how does this place fit into that? And how did you pull that number in APO, anyway?”

“I think that’s rather poor, I must say. I told you how you caught us. It’s only common politeness for you to tell me how we caught you.”

Marshall turned. Tosh smiled back at him – the open smile that she had only managed in L. A. when he had seemed to assert that there was a puzzle she could not crack. Geek reciprocity. He felt oddly touched.

“Oh… Jenny English is setting me a _challenge_ , is that it? Let me see…” Marshall, a creature of habit, began to pace. “I passed out when you said ‘sleep’. Either you had already subjected me to some pretty extensive brainwashing beforehand – which I’m thinking and hoping that you didn’t – or you did something to me in the park which caused it.” Marshall stopped. “Uh-oh. When I was talking to you, I wasn’t looking at my water-bottle, was I?”

“That you weren’t.”

“So, the good Doctor here,” Marshall gestured at Stephen, who favoured him with a small bow, “slipped me a – is this right? – associative-responsive Mickey Finn.” He stopped. “That is beyond cool! In a freaky, psychologically invasive way, of course.”

“Isn’t it just?” Toshiko was almost hugging herself with delight. “Bio-engineered toxin that wraps around your synapses and waits for a verbal trigger.”

“How the hell did you manage that? My people would kill – through the proper channels, and with the right paperwork – for something like it.”

“Long story,” interjected Angie. “Let’s just say that Tosh’s associates don’t shop locally.”

“That doesn’t explain everything, though. There were still three armed guards outside that cell. I’m guessing that you two didn’t take them out with the kung-fu, and you sure weren’t carrying anything when you went in. I designed those scanners myself.

“Except… Of course. They didn’t scan me – and it wasn’t a mosquito that stung me in the park. Capsule attached to the neck with a fake-flesh covering administered once again by Dr. Maturin – am I warm?”

“Well done.” Tosh tried to resettle her coat on her shoulders.

“So, what was in the capsule?”

“An unusual organic compound. It’s brilliant. Apply it to most plastics, like the ones in your doors, and it digests them, leaving a solid matrix that’s almost as hard as steel. Your boys couldn’t get in.”

“I see. But how did you two get me out?”

“Ah. There, I admit, we cheated a bit. Having our friends scry on us and open a trans-dimensional portal to our location wasn’t exactly fair play. But I never said that I was John Dickson Carr.”

“Trans-dimensional portal. Scrying. We’re pretty much back where we started.” Marshall looked at Tosh. “What is this place?”

“Long or short version?”

“Let’s try the short.”

“The Phrontisterion. The Think Tank. The product of stable and sustained Rift manipulation, effected by running Hark-Rosenberg-Sato equations through a cybersemiotic arcanotech interface on a quantum altar.”

“And now let’s try the long.”

“There’s a phenomenon we know as the Rift. It represents the utter chaos and dissolution of conventional spacetime. A clot in what Angie’s people would call the Bleed, the arterial wall between universes.”

“Sounds like something to avoid.”

“It is. But that would currently be quite hard, actually.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re standing in it.” Tosh fiddled with her sleeve, and frowned. “This is a very big story, Marshall Flinkman. And like another big story, it began with a Fall.”

5\. All Her Engines

 _In which a foreign dignitary drops in on Cardiff_.

As the wind howled past her ears, she focussed on the city burgeoning beneath her. The sharp ache of system diagnostics told her that flight was not an option. Too much had been scrambled by the battle, and by the wild energies of her expulsion. Might as well catch the view, then, in the scant seconds left before the view caught her.

It looked beautiful. Cities always scrubbed up well for the night. No matter what raddled old whores they were by day, it was a different story with their glad rags on: street-lights flaunted like jewels, varicose alleys veiled by the dark. Even now, plunging from the heavens with her notional wings aflame, she felt the wince of jealousy. So gorgeous and seductive… how could any woman ever compete with that?

 _Elsewhere, greedy fingers strip the sky. It comes away in great swathes, pleating the planets and the stars, to expose the rotting blackness behind. Heaven is dismantled for the parts._

Odd that it should end this way. She had fought so many fights, solved so many problems, with the world for her stage, six and a half billion groundlings to gape at the show. Now, thanks to one crack-head who could only shoot straight when it was at a vein, she was going to die in the dark, on someone else’s Earth.

And no one would even see.

*****

“We have incoming.”

In the perpetual twilight of the Hub, Toshiko Sato watched the world outside distil into numbers trickling down her screens. She glanced up as Captain Jack Harkness moved to look over her shoulder.

“Talk to me, Tosh.”

“OK. It’s small – about man-sized – and in free-fall.”

“A satellite, maybe?”

“I don’t think so.” Tosh’s fingers crawled across the key-board. “I’ve traced its back-trajectory, but it only appears on the equipment… here. It’s fallen out of the Rift.”

“Then it’s ours. Get me the point of impact.”

“Done.”

“Good. Gwen and Owen won’t have far to go to collect it.”

*****

The SUV pulled up a little way from the crater. Owen Harper was disappointed to note that a crowd had not had time to gather. Fulminating at the incompetence of civilian authorities was a treasured perquisite of his profession, and you couldn’t rant at people who weren’t there yet. It was scant consolation that his colleague, who had already slipped out of the passenger-seat, was wearing tight trousers tonight and would probably have to bend over at some point.

“Do we just go up and look at it, then?” Gwen Cooper tried to keep the gingerness out of her voice.

“No reason not to. The SUV’s sensors aren’t picking up anything toxic in a quarter of a mile, beside that shitty scent you bathe in when you want to give lover-boy a hard-on. His luck’s in tonight, I take it?”

“It’s our anniversary. Not that it’s anything to you.” Gwen advanced cautiously towards the crater. “Or that I need perfume advice from Mr. Alien Old Spice.”

Sensors notwithstanding, Gwen was relieved to see no evidence of Stuff That Glowed: the one nigh-infallible mark, in the former PC’s experience, of Bad Shit from Beyond the Stars going down on the banks of the Taff. She peered over the lip of the crater. Owen saw her eyes widen and heard her quiet intake of breath.

“Owen, you really need to see this…”

*****

“OK, time for a quick physical. Let’s see if she injured herself when she fell from heaven.”

“You can be a proper pillock at times, Owen.”

“Come on, how often does anyone get to say that when it’s true?”

Two voices: a man’s and a woman’s. The man’s was clearly English – cocky and abrasive and so much like… The woman’s had a lilt she did not recognize.

She flinched as firm hands touched her, but their pressure and movement were clinical, almost reassuring. She fought up through the layers of muzziness and groaned.

“Can you hear me?” The woman asked.

“Uh-huh. I feel like… like something big and mean just hit me.”

“Pretty close. It was Cardiff. Try to relax.” The woman addressed her colleague. “Are they on their way?”

“Yeah. They should be here any minute… speak of the devil.”

“That’s no way to talk about your boss, Owen.” Another man’s voice, American this time. “Hi, Gwen.”

“Hi. This is weird…”

“This is Torchwood. Buck-naked girls raining out of the sky is part of the job description. And I go down on my knees every night to thank the God that makes it so. Is she awake, Owen?”

“She’s slipping in and out.”

“I see.” The other man was hunkering down beside her now. “Welcome to Cardiff. I’m Jack. You’re in safe hands.”

“You’re… not Jack.” She focussed, with some difficulty, on the figure beside her. “You’re wearing _shoes_.”

“It’s a quaint Welsh custom.”

“Are you guys… cops?”

“We’re outside the police. Think of us as a higher authority.”

Angela Spica smiled, and passed out again.

6\. After the Fall

 _In which the ghosts of ghosts trouble the cogitations of Torchwood Three._

“It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

Behind Tosh’s back, Owen’s face assumed a look of what he probably thought was heroic martyrdom. Gwen fought the urge to giggle, and cleared her throat.

“What do you mean, Tosh?”

“This whole scenario.” Tosh moved around the chamber to consult a different scanner. The even breathing of the woman from the crater, safely installed on the central table, showed that the Hub’s Autopsy Room was not living up to its name right now. “The fall from Heaven – it’s so archetypal. You can plot it across mythology. Tech brings transgression. Transgression brings a fall. Daedalus entails Icarus.”

“Mulciber.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Mulciber.” Jack, standing near the table, looked up. “Milton’s riff on Hephaestus, and how the Greeks got it wrong when they said he fell on Lemnos: ‘nor did he scape By all his engines, but was headlong sent With his industrious crew to build in Hell.’”

“Not Lemnos, but Hell.” Owen puffed out his cheeks. “Pretty much sums this place up, doesn’t it?”

“ _Au contraire_ , Dr. Harper. Hell is drier, and it has less sheep.”

“I wouldn’t have put you down as a Milton buff, Jack,” said Gwen.

“ _Paradise Lost_ is my bed-side reading. Where would we be without Sin?”

“Wow.”

“What’s that, Tosh?”

“Well, first off… This is a Code Six.”

“Another one? Like our guest downstairs?”

“Uh-huh. Incursion from an alternate Earth – not a shadow of a doubt. The residual energy traces are unmistakable. But that’s not the ‘wow’ part. The other thing is _seriously_ cool.”

“She always says that; and yet, it never is.” Owen swaggered over to the scanner. “Why don’t you stop the intellectual prick-teasing for once, Tosh, and cut to the chase?”

“Fine. This woman has no blood.”

“Something to drink, Owen?” Ianto Jones had Jeevesed in with the coffee. “It’ll wash down that humble pie a treat.”

“No blood? That can’t be right.” Owen glared at the monitor. “What the hell is that pumping through her veins, then?”

“Oh, she has circulatory tissue. But it isn’t blood.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s… that is to say she has…” Tosh dropped her gaze. “She has nine pints of liquid nanotech instead of blood.”

“Thanks for the heads-up, Tosh.” Jack lifted his gun and pointed it at the unconscious woman’s head. “I’m going to kill it now.”

Tosh moved to stand in front of the barrel. “I can’t let you do that, Captain.”

Jack smiled the wide perfect smile that Gwen had learned to fear more than anything from the Rift. “Are you defying me, Toshiko? Do you remember what happened the last time you did that?”

Tosh flinched, but stood her ground. “Last time I was wrong. This time I’m not.”

“Hear her out, Jack.” Gwen took a place by the smaller woman’s side. “And before you start painting this as a Peasants’ Revolt, it isn’t. This is perspective. What you hired me for, remember?”

“What’s to hear? It’s from another Earth. It’s an ex-human with machine traits…”

“And _she_ hasn’t been cybernized. Look at this.” Tosh pointed at the monitor. “What we’re seeing here is man-machine fusion on a level way beyond the Cybermen, Jack. This woman bears about the same relation to them that they did to Long John Silver.”

Ianto mumbled something inaudible, and hurried out of the room. Tosh took on the stricken expression she always got, Gwen reflected, when her brain had just caught up with her mind. She tried to move after him, only to run into Gwen’s restraining arm.

“Let him go, Tosh.”

“But…”

“What are you going to say to him that hasn’t already been said?”

Tosh held her gaze for a moment; then reluctantly nodded. “Fair enough.” She turned back to Jack. “The level of the tech’s not proof positive, of course.”

“Too bloody right it isn’t,” Owen interjected. “How do we know that she isn’t just the next stage in their evolution? Cyberbabe 2.0, for the customer who knows what he wants?”

“Because she isn’t from the right Earth.”

“Huh?”

“After the last Code Six, I refined some of the old software that was salvaged from the Battle of Canary Wharf.” Tosh moved to a workstation, and brought up a couple of running programs. “Do you see? The residual energy profiles of different universes are quite distinctive. The one that the Cyberarmy came from looks like _this_ ; but the traces on our friend downstairs look like _that_ ; and the ones on this woman are different again.” Tosh lifted her chin, and met Jack’s eyes. “I’m not saying that she isn’t a potential danger. But she isn’t a Cyberwoman.”

Jack nodded. “OK; you got me. I’m sorry, Tosh. When a guy feels threatened, he tends to reach for his weapon.”

“And with the conversation safely back in the gutter,” said Gwen, “I’m going to call it a night.”

“What?” spluttered Owen. “You can’t just leave now when…when…”

“ …when everyone’s talking about parallel universes and nano-blood? Yes I can, Owen.” Gwen hoisted her handbag onto her shoulder. “I can walk out of all this right now; go back to my flat; eat the home-cooked _coquilles St. Jacques_ waiting for me there; and – yes, Owen – sleep with my fiancé. I can, and I have to, because the _biggest_ parallel universe we have to worry about is the one that’s right here beneath Cardiff. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m Perspective Girl. And this is my Vanishing Point. Page me if you need me, Jack.”

“Will do, Gwen.”

“I liked her better when she was wet behind the ears,” Owen muttered to Gwen’s departing back.

“Snows of yesteryear, Owen. Live with it.” Jack turned to Tosh. “So then, what can this girl’s nanotech do? I’m assuming that she didn’t have all her blood replaced because she was, like, totally wasted and someone dared her.”

“It’s hard to tell.” Tosh frowned. “The tech is unlike anything in our experience, and it took a knock when she did. But I think that it… makes things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Potentially, almost anything. At the moment, if I’m interpreting the readings correctly, it’s handling self-regeneration and tissue repair.”

“She’s healing?”

“I think so. That may explain why we found her naked in the crater, if some of the capacity is usually dedicated to clothing her. But when it’s running at full, she might be able to create pretty much anything she can think of.”

“Now, that opens up possibilities. Owen, do you think…”

Jack stopped as Ianto burst back into the room.

“Sir, we have a problem.”

“What is it?”

“The Weevils.”

Owen snickered. “Formed a union, have they?”

Ianto stared back at him. “Like you wouldn’t believe…”

7\. Notes from Underground

 _In which a doctor is consulted._

His cell was some distance from the others, for obvious reasons, and several solid doors were kept firmly shut between them. It would not do for there to be a mishap. Otherwise, the plexiglass-fronted cubicle with the ventilation holes was outwardly similar to all the rest.

Tosh’s steps rang hollow along the corridor. When she reached the cell, she found the spare figure of its occupant already standing, hands crossed behind his back. The two contemplated one another gravely for a moment until Tosh stifled a smile.

“What diverts you, Toshiko?”

“It’s nothing. Sorry. I was just thinking that you are so lucky to come from an Earth where people can still eat Fava beans and swill a big Amarone without any baggage, Stephen.”

Stephen Maturin’s brow furrowed. “I do not quite apprehend your meaning, my dear.”

“I hope you never do. Eating people is wrong, take it from me. No matter how well they’re sliced and diced. May I come in? ”

“Please do so.”

Tosh glanced around the chamber. Columns of books shadowed its well-appointed interior. “How is your reading going?”

“It proceeds with some alacrity. Indeed, the pace is a little _too_ precipitate, I find.” Stephen gestured towards an armchair, on which Tosh perched herself. “Hypotheses propounded – refuted – revived, with variation, decades later… At present, I regale myself with the sagacious observations of Mr. Faraday and his successors, and the notion of the ‘disembodied field’. When the study of an hour comprehends the advances of a century, the progress of natural philosophy takes on something of the picaresque, where the sudden reversals of the narrative dizzy the contemplative intellect.”

“Yeah, Maxwell’s equations are a bit of a plot twist. I won’t spoil the big quantum surprise for you.” Tosh bowed her head. “I’m afraid that we’re going to have to move you again, Stephen. Sorry about this. It’s bad enough that the Code Six protocols have kept you quarantined so long…”

“You are very good, Toshiko, but your concern is superfluous. My surroundings are a matter of singular indifference to me. And while the croissants of Cardiff will not bear comparison with those to be had in the Temple Prison under the tyranny of Buonaparte, the company of my present custodians is much preferable.” Stephen stretched his legs. “Does the perturbation of the… other inmates account for this change of policy?”

“You’ve heard them?”

“It would be a sore travail to do otherwise. Listen now, for all faith.”

Beyond the door at the end of the corridor, Tosh could make out a muted, monotonous thudding.

“These Cyclopean forges have laboured in earnest for above an hour. What vexes your ‘Weevils’ so, my dear?”

“We don’t know. Ianto was doing a routine check on the surveillance monitors. He saw that they were all throwing themselves against the doors of their cells, again and again, in – and this is where it gets freaky – perfect synchronicity.”

“Fascinating. How I long to have one such specimen upon my table.”

“I wish that everyone shared your enthusiasm.” Tosh shivered, huddling down into her form-fitting leather coat. “Suzie, a woman who… used to work here, hated Weevils. She thought they showed what the Earth really was: a mouldy little thing, crawling with vermin, in a universe of unknowable wonders.”

“I see. And what do you think, Toshiko?”

“I…” Tosh looked away. “What I think isn’t really important.”

“Humour an old man who has sadly misplaced his own Europe.”

“I think that wonder is where you find it. That things don’t get sexier because they’re out of focus. That the unknowable deserves to be known, and that the only way you can discover the fundamentals that govern what you can’t see is by looking as hard as possible at what you can.” Tosh stopped, and coloured furiously.

“Which is why, my dear, you have what your friend Suzie did not: the soul of a natural philosopher, whose goal is ever to see the small in the great, and the great in the small. _in tenui labor, at tenuis non gloria_ …. The din has abated.”

So it had. In the sudden silence, Ianto’s voice hissed low and urgent in Tosh’s earpiece: “Tosh, you have to get Dr. Maturin and yourself back upstairs _right now_.”

“Why?”

“The Weevil situation just…”

Neither Stephen nor Tosh had heard the sound of a dozen sets of reinforced plexiglass walls exploding simultaneously before. What happened next was therefore a first.

“… escalated.”

8\. Divers Alarums

 _In which bonds of amity are forged in the crucible of panic_.

Tosh hurried back into the heart of the Hub, Stephen in tow. It was at once apparent that Torchwood protocol was still being observed. The obligatory blame-storming session was already in full swing.

“… my arse, tea-boy. What sort of steroids have you been putting in their feed?”

“Tosh, Dr. Maturin,” Jack moved to greet the two arrivals, “hi. We’d welcome your thoughts on how a dozen Weevils all got strong enough to smash our cell walls at once. Against the advice of my doctor,” he glanced back at the middle of the room, where Owen and Ianto were eye-balling each other, “I don’t think it’s because they’ve been eating their Scooby Snacks.”

“This is… bizarre.” Tosh settled into a chair to catch her breath. “Weevils aren’t anywhere near powerful enough to break the plexi-glass.”

“That’s changed.” Jack indicated a monitor. “Slowly but surely, they’re punching their way through our blast doors. Right now, they all hit like a Androgum who’s just found you sleeping with his sister.”

Tosh looked enquiring.

“Long story.” Jack rubbed his jaw reminiscently. “Let’s just say she was worth it…”

“I still say it has to be the food,” Owen paced across the room. “If Tosh can tear herself away from the Imminent Victorian for a sec, we can…”

A high-pitched klaxon sounded. Ianto gave vent to something Welsh and profane. Owen frowned. “What the hell was that?”

“The Mum’s Birthday alarm.” Ianto was scanning another screen.

“The what?”

“After our run-in with Bilis, I realized that we’re sometimes up against things that can get in the Hub without using the doors. And out.”

Ianto stared at Jack, who returned his gaze with a bright smile. Ianto lowered his head again, and resumed: “Anyway, I reconfigured the security systems to detect anything that tried to pull the same sort of stunt. The Mum’s Birthday alarm. For things that always creep up on you unawares.”

“Bloody hell, Ianto, you and your poxy names for things. It’s got an infernal screech to it, and all.”

“Well, I considered using the Mexican Hat Dance, Owen, but we would all have mistaken it for your ring-tone.” Ianto looked up. “We’re reading eight…”

“ _Eight?_ ”

“… eight intruders. They’ve appeared down below.”

“With the Weevils? Someone should have packed an _A to Z_.” Owen smirked. “Nothing like having one problem sort out anoth…”

A muffled boom shook the room. Owen winced. “Me and my big mouth.”

Jack joined Ianto at his station. “What just happened?”

“We lost our blast doors. It wasn’t the Weevils. The intruders must have forced them open.”

“I see.” Jack drew his gun. “Lady and gentlemen, we will shortly have company. Dress to impress. Dr. Maturin, please step into the Autopsy Room.”

The first wave took the familiar shape of four Weevils. What slathered after them into the main Hub, however, was something new. Slightly bigger than the Weevils, it looked like a crocodile half-way through swallowing a live hyena. There was a moment of silence, as five sets of feral eyes focussed on a single point.

“What are they staring at?” whispered Ianto as he looked back at the object of their gaze. Who swallowed nervously, and cleared her throat.

“Um… I think that would be me…” said Tosh.

Jack took aim. “Open fire.”

Whatever had enhanced the strength of the Weevils had also done wonders for their resilience. It swiftly became clear that several clear shots were needed to down one. The Torchwood team found themselves being forced back across the room, the three men doing their best to block their assailants’ path to Toshiko.

Tosh herself found her perceptions tearing into discrete drops of panic. The thing at the back jumping on Owen, the two of them going down together beside a work-station. Ianto accounting for a Weevil as it charged him, only to be slammed against the wall by its body. A claw smashing against her wrist, knocking the gun out of her hand. Herself defenceless, a Weevil flanking her on either side, as Jack rose from despatching one of their comrades. Jack raising his own gun against her assailants, but not even he could down both of them before…

Three shots rang out. The unknown creature’s head exploded. Both of the remaining Weevils dropped.

Jack scratched his head, and looked up at the two figures silhouetted against the doorway to the Autopsy Room.

“Sleeping Beauty picked the right moment to wake up, I see. Nice work splatting hyena-head, ma’ am. Where did you two get those guns?”

Angie shrugged. “I made them. Just now. Normally I would have gone for an automatic, or a rocket launcher, but I’m not quite myself yet, and I wouldn’t want to smear you guys across the scenery.”

“See?” said Tosh excitedly. “I told you she makes things!”

“Roll over, _Blue_ sodding _Peter_ ,” came the somewhat muffled voice of Owen. “And speaking of rolling over, could someone get the cold meats counter here off of me?”

“That was good shooting,” said Jack, as he hefted the carcass away from his medic, “but I’m curious, Doctor Maturin. There were two Weevils on Tosh. How did you know which one I’d be gunning for?”

“It seemed a reasonable supposition, Captain Harkness, that you would target the larger, as presenting the greater threat.” Stephen advanced into the main Hub, and helped Ianto to his feet. “I therefore followed the sound doctrine enunciated by a naval gentleman of my acquaintance, and chose the lesser of two Weevils.”

9\. Flotsam and Jetsam

 _In which strangers on a plane compare notes._

“Will this hold them back?” grunted Ianto. He, Jack, and Owen were hauling the largest available filing cabinets across the entrances to the main Hub. Owen shrugged.

“Wouldn’t have thought so. If they can get past the blast doors, this little lot should be a walk-over. Might slow them down, though.”

“Things still don’t add up. If they want…” Ianto darted a look behind him, and lowered his voice, “if they want Tosh, and they can teleport, why don’t they just appear in here and grab her?”

“Teleportation is dicey,” Jack lowered one of the cabinets into place. “You have to be very sure that the terrain you’re going into hasn’t changed from what you expect. Otherwise, you pop back into occupied space, maybe fuse with something like this…” he patted the box, “and, suddenly, ‘buns of steel’ isn’t a metaphor.”

“So what’s their play, sir?”

“Best guess? The first wave was speculative: seeing what we’ve got. The next one won’t be as easy.”

“Oh well,” Owen slammed another cabinet home, and grinned, “I never was one for the nursery slopes, anyway.”

Across the room, Tosh and Stephen, whose physical exiguity excused them both from furniture detail, were listening to Angie. “… so, my people are basically our Earth’s peace-keepers, operating out of the Carrier.”

“Which is?” prompted Tosh.

“A sentient ship, fifty miles wide and thirty-five deep, powered by a caged baby universe, cruising the inter-dimensional Bleed.” Tosh whimpered quietly, making Angie look up at her, “are you ok?”

“No worries,” said Owen, trying not to drop a stand on his foot. “I think that you just gave Tosh her first orgasm of the year.”

Tosh glared at Owen, and resumed: “But if your… Authority is so powerful, what went wrong? Why did you crash-land on Cardiff? On our Cardiff?”

“The Terrene Horde.”

“The what?”

“The Terrene Horde. A bio-engineered army, brewed by the Murder Colonels in the Birthing Vats of Zissel’ Teng. Since before World War Two, the Horde had been squirreled away in cryo. Then, a couple of days ago, something woke them up.

“The Colonels designed the Horde to be an army of super-soldiers. Strong, fast, tough… your basic economy-class meta-mook. Thousands of utterly subservient goons, all linked by a docile hive-mind.

“They _should_ have been another day at the office for my guys. But something was wrong. The Horde were orders of magnitude more powerful than they should have been, and their hive-mind had somehow gotten smart. And focussed.”

“On what?”

“On me. You would have thought that they would be more preoccupied with, e.g., the guy who could kill them by looking at them, or the girl who was ripping off their heads with her feet…”

“That’s what I love about this job,” said Owen, _sotto voce_ , “the characters you meet.”

“… but no dice. They stopped at nothing to get to me, and we were being overwhelmed. I tried to open a door back to the Carrier, so that the others could regroup, but it didn’t work. Something – something powerful– was blocking access to the Bleed.

“Things were getting worse and worse. In the end, the Doctor…”

“What did you say?” Jack twisted away from the makeshift barricade to stare at Angie.

“The Doctor – our shaman – cast a spell that was supposed to shunt me somewhere safe.”

“A _spell_?” Tosh’s nose wrinkled. Jack turned back to his work.

“Does the idea of magic upset you, Tosh?” Owen smirked. “Next you’ll be telling me you don’t believe in fairies.”

“Anyway, the Doctor _did_ manage to transport me, but I didn’t wind up anywhere safe. I found myself in mid-air, plummeting towards this Earth’s take on Cardiff. And on my own, I can’t get back.”

“That is absolutely fascinating,” Tosh breathed. She looked at Stephen, who had been following the account with equal attention. “I think that we have the explanation for what happened to you, Stephen.”

“How so, my dear?”

“Dr. Maturin,” Tosh turned back to Angie, “is from an alternate Earth too, one with somewhat unusual characteristics. I think that his native spacetime abuts what we call the Rift. In our universe, the Rift’s proximity causes involuntary time-travel. Where Stephen comes from, though, it seems to produce generalized temporal dilation instead, like a scar pulling at the healthy skin around it. His Earth has only reached the early Nineteenth Century, for example. And there are other… oddities.”

“As I have said before, Toshiko, I believe that that you state your case with undue vehemence.”

“I don’t think that she does, Stephen,” said Jack. “From what you’ve said, your Earth crams way more into its years than they should be able to take. Your 1812 wasn’t an overture. It was the _Ring cycle_.”

“Anyway,” Tosh resumed, “it was still puzzling us what brought Stephen here. One minute he was happily bird-watching not far from his Llantrisant…”

“Reports of the Bearded Tern, unattested hitherto in that vicinity…”

“… the next, he was whisked to the middle of our Cardiff. Bit of a culture shock, as you can imagine, but Dr. Maturin is a very adaptable man. That FAQ which Gwen put together for our accidental tourists didn’t hurt, either.”

“Girl had to be good for something besides pouting and lilting. Ouch.”

“I’m sorry, Owen; was that your toe?”

“But the thing is this: even if the Rift does exert an influence on Stephen’s Earth, there’s no evidence that it’s ever created a bridge from there to ours before. Our manifestation of the Rift only accesses distant points of this spacetime. It doesn’t open up alternate realities.

“I think – and this is just a hypothesis, you understand – that when Angie was shunted out of her home dimension, the Rift, for want of a better word, ‘caught’ her. But that catch sent ripples through the Rift itself. Because the Rift tangles up time as well as space, some of the fall-out happened before the event that prompted it…”

“… and so Dr. Maturin’s appearance four weeks back was actually the prequel to Miss Spica’s tonight. Brilliant.” Jack smiled.

“Brilliant or not, we’re still in the shit.” Owen kicked a shelf into place. “We’ve got two trans-dimensional castaways we can’t send home. Oh yeah, and the local mega-vermin are all pumped up with a taste for techie. Not to mention their teleporting mates downstairs and whatever the hell that other thing was.”

“I suspect, Dr. Harper, that our woes are yet more substantial than you suppose.”

 

“Do what?”

“The concinnity between Miss Spica’s account of herself and our present plight is most suggestive.” Stephen inspected his gun with a critical eye. “If I understand your narrative aright, Miss Spica…”

“Call me Angie, please. Anyone I’ve already handed hardware can take intimacy as read.”

“… Angie, your problems began when creatures that share a collective will evinced unusual prowess and strength of purpose?”

“Yeah.”

“And this purpose was the destruction of yourself, disregarding your colleagues?”

“I can see where this is heading, Stephen,” Angie frowned, “and I don’t like the destination one bit.”

“Agreed.” Tosh had turned pale. “The same pattern – replicating itself across realities. What if…”

The rest of Tosh’s question petered out at the sight of the barricades melting.

  
10\. Unexpected Patrons

 _In which little salvation is found from wood or steel._

As the manufacture of furniture fondue went, one could not help but admire the tempo. It was neither so slow as to leave any doubt about what was happening, nor so fast as to prevent a good view of the Daliesque distortions it entailed. The handles of the filing cabinets curved into sleepy, drunken grins as they collapsed.

  
Owen, who was standing nearest, had expected the figures disclosed by the viscous barricade to be more Weevils, or further rejects from _The_ _Garden_ _of_ _Earthly_ _Delights_. He was therefore disconcerted to see seven men in what looked like long dresses. Transvestites, in Owen’s experience, were not life-threatening (unless you counted that unfortunate misunderstanding in Pontypridd, which had been down to vodka and poor pub lighting). Then it struck him that they were probably cultists, which were an entirely different kettle of fish. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  
The weirdo in the lead waved the piece of wood he was holding, and barked a word. Owen’s gun flew from his deadened hand. The weirdo grinned. “You muggles and your guns,” he said.

“This from a man holding a dildo.” Owen’s forehead connected with the cultist’s nose. He went down, blood spurting. The next in line flourished his own stick, and whispered something that hurled Owen half-way across the room. He crawled over to join the others behind a desk.

“OK, guys; you’ve got my permission to waste these losers with extreme prejudice.”

“Wish we could,” said Ianto. “Whatever he did took out our guns too.”

“Bollocks. Can the human Argos catalogue whip us up some new ones sharpish?”

“Working on it,” hissed Angie. “I’m tired, and hurt, and slow right now. I can’t even manifest my own armour.”

The seven men advanced into the room. The one in the lead, still clutching his nose, focussed on Stephen with a look of recognition which was becoming all too familiar. He smiled; pointed his stick at the world-lost doctor; and said something which to Owen’s incredulous ears sounded a hell of a lot like “Abracadabra”.

The air shivered for a moment. Nothing else happened. The man with the broken nose looked puzzled.

 _Hi guys_. _Nice little Killing Curse there, by the way. Your average over-the-counterspell would have had serious trouble bouncing it. Good thing my mo-jo’s prescription._

“Show yourself, witch.” The man in the lead brandished his stick.

“And now an invisible American chick is wittering in our heads. Do you have any sodding clue what’s going on here, Harkness?” asked Owen.

Jack shrugged. “None at all. Sit tight until something explodes.”

 _My. What a big wand the gentleman has. Don’t really dig wands much myself. Thank you, Dr. Freud. The trouble with wands is this: every last sprig of ’em remembers what it was like to be a tree. And it’s not that hard to jog their memories._

The men in robes gasped with pain. Blood blossomed from their hands as the sticks they were holding grew thorns.

 _They’re all yours._

“Too bloody right they are.” Owen started to rise, until he felt the pressure of Tosh’s grip on his arm.

“I don’t think she was talking to you, Owen.”

In the middle of the room, air and darkness were shrugged off of slender shoulders, to reveal a girl in her late teens with messy brown hair. There was a stick in her right hand. It showed no sign of born-again verdure.

Stephen, Angie, and the home contingent retained enough presence of mind to duck as the girl raised the stick. Her voice put Latin through a mangle and pushed out sheets of silk, which swiftly cocooned the disarmed men. They toppled over, feebly twitching.

Jack whistled. “Now, there’s a girl who knows her way around a wand.” He rose, slowly and carefully. “Hi, miss. We come in peace. Well, I come in peace and these guys hide behind desks, but I think you’ll agree that they’re doing a pretty pacific job. Where’s your telepathic friend?”

“Here.” Beside a nearby chair, a small, red-haired woman blew out the candle in her hand. This act somehow made sense of the fact that they had been aware she was there all along, much as one might suddenly find one knew all the lyrics to a song heard in childhood but decades forgotten. Owen’s brow creased as he tried to cope with the mnemonic vertigo.

“I was numbing you to my presence,” the red-head explained. “Undetectability on a shoestring. We can’t all have borrowed cloaks of invisibility. Time’s short, so I’ll keep things simple. This is Hermione…”

“Hello.”

“… and I’m Willow. We’re witches from two different alternate Earths, and we brought munchies. I’d say more, but I’m going to be busy passing out.”

The red-head swayed, and crumpled to the floor.

11\. How to Steal the Sky

 _In which anagrams and ceilings bulk surprisingly large._

“You know,” said Ianto, a little indistinctly, “until today, I never realized that the ‘alien tech’ Torchwood is supposed to catalogue could include confectionary.” He swallowed one bean and started chewing on another. “Mmm… Welsh rarebit. Do you have any idea what came over your friend?”

“She’s exhausted.” Hermione was watching Owen and Stephen as they tended to Willow. “Magic takes a lot out of her. Getting us here, working that counter-spell, _and_ knocking out those other toothy things they had in reserve down below was all just too much. She should be better soon if she gets a chance to rest.”

“You seem to be fine, though.” Tosh frowned. “Does… witchcraft work differently for you? Is that why you have a wand and she doesn’t?”

“That’s right. On my Earth, no one has practised the Old Ways, like Willow, in almost two and a half millennia. They come with a pretty hefty price-tag.”

“Wow, Hermione.” Willow had opened her eyes, and was propping herself up on one elbow. “Things are looking up. You just put together a whole sentence about the way I do magic which didn’t involve the word ‘parasite’.”

Hermione’s lips thinned. “The wizards of my Earth spent centuries learning to work their spells with less and less expenditure of force. A wand isn’t a lever. It’s more like a conductor’s baton, guiding the universe through a score we know it understands.

“In the demonic playpen Willow calls home, however, magicians concentrated on harnessing ever more power to make the Old Ways work. When they don’t find enough in themselves, they take it from elsewhere. Spirits. Books. Other people. _Architecture_.”

Willow sighed. “I’ve already apologized for doing that.”

“The ceiling of the Great Hall was more than a thousand years old.”

“Twice.”

“ _Hogwarts: A History_ called it a ‘feat unequalled by modern thaumaturgy’.”

“And what’s the point of a ceiling that mirrors the sky in _England_ , anyway? Were they afraid you kids would forget what rain looks like?”

“It took all the four founders nine months to put the magic into it. And you ten seconds to suck it dry.”

“The ceiling was the nearest viable thing I could harness that didn’t have a pulse. Opening a fire-escape from your reality was one of the hardest workings I’ve ever tried.”

Willow looked at the puzzled expressions around her, and struggled into a sitting position. “It was like this. There’s a spot on my Earth called the Hellmouth. It’s a planar nexus, a huge case of inter-dimensional incontinence. We’re used to it spewing out random badness on a regular basis – that’s pretty much what it’s there for – …”

“Tell me about it,” said Jack. “Do those beans really taste of anything, Hermione?”

“Anything that might end up in your mouth.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“… but it had started seriously fritzing, so I went to investigate. Turns out that the Hellmouth had been inflamed by wizards on a different Earth prodding it. They were conducting rituals to find out why everyone in their reality had just lost the ability to teleport…”

“Apparate…”

“… teleport, and their spells were probing neighbouring dimensional anomalies to see what was wrong. Unfortunately, I happened to be close to the Hellmouth when ‘probing’ switched to ‘groping’. One minute I was skipping around in Sunnydale, California, happy as a lamb on happy pills, maybe even indulging myself in a little gambolling on the side. The next, I was sitting in the middle of a warded circle in Alt-UK, eyeballing some guy’s hem-line.”

“Which was a shock; take it from me. That spell shouldn’t have been able to summon _anything_.And we’d expected the instrument of all our woe to be less ginger.”

“Anyway, Hermione’s people were none the wiser about what was blocking their teleportation, and they couldn’t think of an easy way to send me back. I was on the verge of becoming… upset. At that point, though, some of Hermione’s old friends crashed the party.”

“Old friends?” said Angie.

“Death Eaters. See this?” Hermione pulled strands of silk away from one of the captured assailants. On the man’s forearm, there was a glowing tattoo, in the shape of a human skull with a snake for a tongue. The proleptic mummy gave a muffled groan. Hermione kicked him. “It’s called the Dark Mark.”

“‘Dark Mark,’” Owen sniffed. “Your Earth’s got a Ianto too, then. What does it mean?”

“Means that the recipient belongs to a cabal of dark wizards.”

“Bar-coded villains,” put in Willow. “We could do with a piece of that down my way.”

“The Dark Mark also established a rudimentary empathic link between those wizards – the Death Eaters – and their master. Until now, that is.” Hermione looked up. “But Willow and I think that someone else…”

“…just hacked the empathic network?” Tosh interjected. “Used it to wrest control of the Death Eaters from their old boss? Made them harder in the process?”

“How did you know that?” Hermione stared narrowly at Tosh. Jack noticed that the body language of both women had shifted. Hermione drew herself up and lost her bibliophoric hunch. Tosh folded her arms and resettled her reading glasses on her nose.

“There’s been an awful lot of that happening around here,” said Tosh. “Call it pattern recognition.”

“Well, you’re right,” Hermione nodded, in a rather wary fashion which did not entail breaking eye-contact with Tosh. Jack was reminded of someone bowing before a judo bout. He grinned, and went back to searching optimistically through the bag of beans for a pink one.

“The Death Eaters made an all-out assault on Hogwarts, my school, just as everyone was trying to work out what had happened with Willow,” Hermione continued. “They’d tried attacking the school before. This time, though, things were different. None of the more powerful Death Eaters had come, for one thing, let alone You-Know-Who…. er, sorry, I mean, um….”

“Voldemort,” interjected Willow, “their leader. And you can stop giving me that look, Hermione. Names kinda lose their scare-value after your first attempted deicide.”

“Now, Volde… their leader doesn’t usually get his hands dirty anyway, but it was odd that none of his lieutenants had turned up, either. My theory is that the really strong ones were able to resist whatever hijacked the Dark Mark, and that they must be holed up with their master somewhere wondering what just happened.”

“Which is a nice thought,” Willow giggled. “I doubt that Tom Marvolio Riddle is a very happy bunny right now.”

“Tom Marvolio Riddle?” prompted Tosh.

“Voldemort.”

“Oh.” Tosh’s lips moved soundlessly for a moment. “He calls himself LORD Voldemort, I bet. The anagram doesn’t work otherwise.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Cool. Um…” Jack sensed another dojo moment. “…who got it faster?”

“Too close to call. You’re good.” Willow smiled. “I’d be interested to see what you’ve got.”

Tosh smiled back. “Mutual. Um. So, Hermione, the evil mastermind and Araucaria fan has lost his grip on his minions. What exactly did they do? Who were they after?”

“That was the bizarre thing. They were after me. And Willow.”

“Not that bizarre, surely. You’re clearly a witch with a _lot_ of promise,” Jack beamed at Hermione, who blushed, “and Willow is a dimension-hopping wannabe god-slayer. Yeah, people: I worked out what ‘deicide’ means. You don’t have a monopoly on smarts.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Thing is: neither Hermione nor me is really used to that kind of attention. Without going into yawny detail, we both hang with a Chosen One. Someone with a bad – possibly terminal – case of Destiny. When a master-plan’s afoot, it’s usually aimed at our friends. It’s a bit freaky to find ourselves dragged into the lime-light like this so that dweebs with wands can take pot-shots at us.”

Willow sighed. “The Death Eaters stormed in, then, and tried to take the two of us out. They ignored anyone else who didn’t get in their way. Hermione tells me that rank-and-file Death Eaters tend to be clueless, but that these ones seemed methed up, somehow.”

“Yes, they did.” Hermione shuddered. “The foot-soldiers are usually a bit rubbish, really. Unimaginative hex selection; no discipline; wand technique like… like…”

“…. little boys writing their names in the snow?” offered Owen. “Don’t all act as though I was the only one thinking it.”

“… but now they were sharp. Reactive. Focussed. It was looking bad.” The young witch sighed. “In the end, Willow and I decided we had to run somewhere they couldn’t reach.”

“Where?” asked Angie.

“Sunnydale, Willow’s home. Wizards on my Earth have never mastered planar travel, you see. Instantaneous transportation within one reality, yes; passing from one reality to another, no. You need the Old Ways to do a working like that, and it takes a lot of power.”

“Which, luckily, I had. Even if I needed to steal the sky to get it.”

“More than a thousand years old…”

“ _Anyway_ , I thought that once we made it to Sunnydale, I could research a way to send Hermione home.” Willow rubbed her eyes. “Unfortunately, I felt the spell go screwy as I cast it. The wrong Earth pulled us in. The next thing we knew, we were in your Cardiff. And pretty soon after _that_ , we got jumped by a Gronoc Demon.”

“A what?” said Owen.

“A that,” Willow prodded the hyena-crocodile carcass on the floor. “That’s not a prime specimen, of course. Usually more head and less dead. On my Earth, a firm called Wolfram and Hart used Gronocs as inter-dimensional FedEx. They’re sort of like demonic couriers. They can flit between realities at will and take things, or people, with them. I’m sure that it won’t surprise anyone here to learn that their other main feature is a kind of racial telepathy.

“After Hermione hexed the Gronoc, I did some haruspicy to find out whether there were any others like it in the area.”

“Which was revolting, by the way.”

“Squeaky-clean sympathetic magic. I don’t see what the fuss is about. It’s very easy, too. Give me a nail clipping, I can find the hand. Give me a shoe, I can find the owner…”

“Give her a demon’s giblets, she can find other demons. Revolting.”

“So, when I sensed one underground right about here, we came to investigate. The rest is history. Or in the case of these guys,” Willow nudged a recumbent Death Eater, “tapestry. Nice work with the silk, Hermione.”

“Wizards. Evil Anagrammatic Overlords. Trans-dimensional demons.” Jack sighed. “We need to think all this through, people. Owen, secure the Weevils and the Death Eaters. If you should happen to impair their chances of producing little Death Eaters in the process, so be it.”

“I love my job.”

“Everyone else, join me in the Boardroom.”

Jack strode out of the main Hub. Behind him, Owen chortled; Death Eaters whimpered; and Stephen spoke in a low voice to a perplexed-looking Ianto:

“… should be quite obvious to a man of parts such as yourself, my dear. Simply take the letters from I AM LORD VOLDEMORT and then…”

12\. A Little List 

_In which they’ll none of them be missed…_

“Well,” said Willow, flopping back in one of the Boardroom’s chairs, “you guys work in the comfiest government conspiracy this small-town girl has seen.”

“‘Government conspiracy,’ huh,” Jack followed suit and languidly rested his feet on the table. “The devilishly cunning line that we’re photo-sensitive agoraphobics running a hi-tech pizza delivery firm won’t fly, then?”

“No dice. The whole exposed-pipe interior look is a big give-away.”

“What can I say? At Torchwood, we like to display our equipment.”

“I can tell.”

“So, what have government conspiracies ever done to you, Willow Rosenberg? Your tone tells me this one isn’t your first.”

“My second. If it helps any, yours is ahead on points. At least you guys don’t have a mad world-dominating cyborg stashed in your basement. And from the looks on all your faces, I’m going to move right along and pretend I didn’t just say that.”

“Good plan.” Jack surveyed the assembled throng. The Boardroom was crowded. Torchwood Three had never been meant to accommodate this many people.

Torchwood One had been where the dignitaries were entertained and suitably impressed, where Yvonne had worked the funding long con with that smile and that suit. Where the sun dragged shadows like a mop, now, across the stained floors nothing would clean. Jack blinked the thought away, and hoisted up a smile.

“As I see it, here’s where we’re at. Anyone feel free to jump in, as long as you remember that I have jurisdiction and the biggest gun. Something, across at least four universes, is playing Pimp My Mook. It’s taking over shared consciousnesses for its own ends and making its new goons stronger and tougher when it does.”

“How do we know that one intelligence is behind this, sir?” objected Ianto. “What if it’s just some kind of trans-dimensional hive-mind plague?”

“An interesting hypothesis, Mr. Jones, but that zeal for combined endeavour which our foes have demonstrated tells against it.”

Jack nodded. “Dr. Maturin’s right. Something’s orchestrating this. It’s using these demonic couriers to move its troops around, and it’s already playing mix ’n’ match. Death Eaters, Weevils… I wouldn’t be surprised if your Horde puts in an appearance soon, Angie.”

Angie shuddered. “I sure hope not.”

“What does the Terrene Horde look like, anyway?” asked Tosh. “You’ve never said.”

“Like Godzilla’s love child by Mothra. Only smaller. And lots of them.”

“Oh.” Tosh frowned. “The other thing, besides what Jack’s already said, is that people who should be able to teleport or move between dimensions aren’t able to do it properly anymore. Hermione… when you and Willow got to our Cardiff, did you try to teleport?”

“Apparate…”

“Whatever. Did you try?”

“Yes, I did.” Hermione sighed. “It still doesn’t work. All my other spells have been fine, but I can’t Disapparate, even here.”

“How did you two get into the Hub, then?” asked Ianto.

“Hermione worked an Opening Charm on the front door,” said Willow. “Girl has a gift for house-breaking.”

“So it’s not just your universe which seems to have a teleport block.” Tosh turned to Angie. “That fits what you said about the Authority’s fight with the Terrene Horde.”

Angie nodded. “Uh-huh. All of a sudden, we were just cut off from the Carrier. Teleporting me anywhere took all the power of Earth’s own shaman. And even then, I wound up in the wrong place.”

“Just like getting away from Hermione’s school needed Willow main-lining millennial foundation magic.” Tosh sat back. “But the Gronocs, and the Death Eaters, can do their thing just fine.”

“No way is that a coincidence,” said Willow. “Whatever’s behind this isn’t stinting the mo-jo. And if it’s screwing up teleportation across the board, it doesn’t care who it pisses off. Sooner or later, someone like D’Hoffryn is going to notice that his girls have lost their Frequent Flyer Plan. And trust me: no one below the level of Major God wants to mess with the CEO of Vengeance Inc.”

“Then the notion of ‘divide and conquer’ is not the sole possession of my single Earth,” Stephen steepled his fingers, “for surely against just such a policy do we stand arrayed.”

“It does look like that, doesn’t it?” Hermione’s voice was hushed. “Something out there can move troops between universes at will. And as far as we know, no one else can reliably follow suit…”

“So the bad guys play tag-team with our asses until they get what they want.” Angie frowned. “Can’t say I’m loving this scenario.”

“That’s the question, though,” Jack resumed, “what _do_ these guys want? From what we’ve seen, that looks like ‘heads on a plate’.”

“But only the right heads. Most people they just try to ignore.” Ianto smiled slightly. “Even _you_ , sir.”

“Don’t think it’s gone unnoticed. Man, is that Evil Mastermind ever going to have some explaining to do.” Jack leaned back in his chair. “On one Earth, they were gunning for Angie. At Hermione’s school, they were after her and Willow. We’ve seen them ourselves trying to target Tosh and Dr. Maturin.

“So we have to ask ourselves: why these people? And is Mook International hunting anybody else?”

“Yes, they are, and I have the names.” Owen sauntered into the Boardroom. “You can call me ‘Owen “utter shagging genius” Harper’ now or save it ’til later, ’cos I don’t like to stand on ceremony.”

“And how exactly do you know all this, Owen?” asked Tosh sceptically.

“Because they had a shopping list.”

“A _shopping_ list?” Tosh wrinkled her nose.

“You know how it is.” Owen tossed a roll of heavy parchment onto the Boardroom table and smoothed it out. “You’re setting out for the offie, so you write yourself a note to drop in at the supermarket while you’re at it, because you’re a bit peckish…”

His finger stabbed at a name written on the parchment. Tosh’s stomach clenched as she read it.

“…and you could murder a Japanese.”

Ianto glared. “That’s not funny.”

“Do I look like I’m laughing, Mr. Mop?”

“Where did you find this, Owen?” Jack pulled the parchment over to himself and began to examine it.

“That ponce who called me a ‘boggle’…”

“He called you a ‘muggle’, actually.” Hermione moved around the table to look over Jack’s shoulder. “‘Boggle’ is a popular word game.”

“That ponce who called me a _muggle_ , then, had it hidden in his dress. And what’s a ‘muggle’ when it’s at home?”

“A person who can’t do magic,” said Willow. “Or maybe an STD. One of the two. Wizards from Planet Hermione tend to talk about them the same way, so it’s hard to tell.”

“My parents are muggles.” Hermione flushed. “Willow’s not being fair.”

“But I’m being honest. What did you do with those guys, Owen?”

“Well, first they Resisted Arrest until I got bored and let them stop.” Owen cracked his knuckles ruminatively. “Then I clapped them in proper restraints. Not that Miss Silk Bondage over there,” he nodded appreciatively at Hermione, “hadn’t done a good job of that already.”

“Their wands?” Hermione prompted.

“Locked away somewhere a long way from them _and_ the Weevils. They’re also doped up to the eye-balls. Don’t want another jail-break on our hands.”

Stephen frowned. “Interrogation, then, may prove troublesome.”

“Funnily enough, Hippocrates, that thought did occur to me. I had a go before I gave them the meds.” Owen sighed, and pulled up a chair. “Eff all to say, the lot of them. It was like someone turned the lights off behind their eyes when I asked a question.”

“Kind of like your girlfriends, really.”

“Shut it, Ianto.”

“Enough, you two.” Tosh drummed her fingers on the table. “The organ-grinder doesn’t want us talking to his monkeys. Makes sense. What about the Weevils?”

“Stitched up; trussed up; sedated. I considered putting them out of my misery, but you and Gwen would have given me aggro unlimited for baiting my inner Care Bear. Then I went through the prisoners’ effects, as PC Cooper would say. That was when I found the list.”

“The list.” Jack read aloud: “‘Angela Spica; Hermione Granger; Willow Rosenberg; Stephen Maturin; Toshiko Sato.’” He looked up. “It doesn’t end there, either.”

“No, it doesn’t. And some of those other names are dead weird. I’d like to meet the mum who decided to call her kid ‘Abraham Sapien’. I mean, did she _want_ the shit kicked out of him at school, or what? Bit bloody fishy, if you ask me. There’s some sort of funny code written beside all the names, as well.”

“Let me see.” Willow peered at the parchment. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. It’s Endel-Chi, the sacral tongue of the Ravening Brethren in Second Mu.”

“ _Second_ Mu?” Tosh’s eyes were wide.

“Uh-huh. Founded after the original Mu was, er, eaten.” Willow shuddered. “Atlantis got lucky.”

“Can you read it?”

“Sure. The librarian at my high school taught me during lunch breaks. Have you ever come across the idea of spatial tenses?”

“Modifications to the verb or predicate that define place in the way conventional tenses determine time. Yeah, it’s a cool idea.” Tosh smiled. “Some artificial languages use it.”

“Not just artificial ones. The Ravening Brethren were there first. Endel-Chi can define position in ways no other language can manage as easily, including which universe something is happening in.” Willow sat back. “So, even though the Brethren themselves are long… er…”

“Digested?” said Jack.

“… folks who are into serious dimension-hopping – anyone managing Gronocs, for instance – still use it.”

“The diplomatic language of those who walk the worlds,” breathed Stephen. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Would I be right in surmising, then, that the notes beside our several names betoken our present whereabouts?”

“Good call, Dr. Maturin. In fact, they plot our trajectories.” Willow traced out the names, looking thoughtful. “Angie’s is kind of ambiguous. Even Endel-Chi has a lot of trouble with in-between places like the Bleed. But it still makes it clear that she started on one Earth – which I’m guessing is the one with Authority issues - and ended on this one.

“Mine tracks me from my Earth to Hermione’s to here. Hermione’s is like mine, but a bit simpler, because she didn’t start out from Sunnydale. Dr Maturin’s just goes from what I presume is his home dimension to your Cardiff, and Tosh’s is the simplest of all, because she’s never left this spacetime.”

“What about the other names?” asked Angie.

“Well, I’m not familiar with the designations, but they all seem to be on different alternate Earths. And they’re pretty static; these guys haven’t been moving anywhere. Given the way things are right now, they probably couldn’t if they wanted to.”

“While we hang together, they most assuredly hang separately.”

“Nicely put, Stephen,” said Tosh, “although I doubt that Franklin had anything like this in mind.”

“Don’t be so sure, Tosh. Old Ben had depths you wouldn’t believe, and you don’t know who was holding his kite.” Jack rose “So, gang, here’s the thing. We seem to have worked out something about our enemy’s methods and aims. It wants Tosh and our four guests, and it doesn’t care what it goes through to get them. We also have reason to believe that there are others out there in the same boat – or alternate versions of the boat that are even smaller and leakier. Which all leads back to the number one question.

“What do we plan to do about it?”

13\. A Castle in the Air

 _In which Captain Harkness proves that he knows how to handle techies._

“We have to run,” said Tosh quietly.

Jack frowned. “I’ve no intention of going anywhere. Torchwood ass is pretty, Torchwood ass is _very_ pretty,” Ianto tried not to blush, and failed with dignity, “but that doesn’t mean I’m itching to haul it away from the Hub.”

“Not Torchwood. Us. Willow, Stephen, Angie, Hermione, and me.” Tosh bit her lip. “These things can track us, Jack; we’ve seen that from the Endel-Chi. They know we’re here, and I don’t think they’ll stop coming until we’re dead.”

“Yes,” piped up Hermione. “We saw that at Hogwart’s. When one wave of Death Eaters failed, it was only a couple of hours before there was another. And another. Even after what…” Hermione glanced at Willow and dropped her head, “…what happened to the first batch.”

“You see? We can’t go on endangering the Hub by fighting these battles here.”

“I’m afraid that Tosh is correct, sir,” said Ianto. “We’ve already lost a full level of containment down below. At this rate, it won’t be long before the entire basement is compromised. And there’s stuff down there that could make the Bristol Channel a whole lot wider, if it ever got caught in any cross-fire.”

Jack clicked his teeth with his tongue. “Can we be sure that they’ll be drawn away from the Hub if you guys make tracks?”

“I think so,” said Hermione. “That was what happened at my school, anyway. The attacks stopped as soon as we left.”

Jack stared at the witch. “And you know that how, exactly?”

“I have a map. Look,” Hermione produced a sheaf of heavy parchment, similar in texture to the list of names, but completely blank. She touched it lightly with her wand in three different places. The pristine surface began to glow.

“You know, I could have sworn the guy you borrowed that thing from said it was password-locked…” Willow murmured.

“Um, it is, actually.” Hermione looked uncomfortable. “But _I_ think that the passwords are a bit silly. Little boys saying ‘ooo; look at me; I’m so naughty’. So I worked out a way to bypass them.”

“And you haven’t told your friends this, huh?”

“No. They sort of hero-worship one of the men who made it, you see. He’s dead now. They wouldn’t like my tampering. And they still enjoy the naughtiness, so I don’t want to take that away from them. Boys should get to be boys. Especially if…” Her face clouded.

“…especially if they might not get to be men,” Jack sighed and thought about the wars he had known, sometimes in stereo. “You’re too young to have to be that wise, Hermione Granger. So, you know origami. Show me your moves.”

Hermione flattened out her parchment beside the List. The others craned to look at it. “What you are seeing is a floor-plan of Hogwart’s. The little moving dots with the names beside them are people.”

“You can track individuals anywhere in that building with magic?” Tosh was wide-eyed. “That is _so_ neat.”

“Yes, it is.” Hermione glowed briefly with the practiced erubescence of one used to praise; then continued: “When the Death Eaters were invading, the Map was crawling with names I didn’t recognize. Or knew only too well. But now, the only people there are staff and students, just as it should be.” She looked up. “Not a Death Eater in sight. The Ministry of Magic must have moved the ones that were left off the premises.”

“I think that clinches it, Jack.” Tosh hoped that her voice was steady. “We have to leave.”

“And do what?”

“Buy some more time to work out what’s going on. Maybe find a way of warning the other people on that list.”

Jack nodded “Agreed. Like Ianto said, hosting Fight Night at the Hub is a gourmet recipe for disaster. And - wounding to my ego though it is to admit it - I suspect that right now, Tosh, you’re better off with our new friends than you are with us. But I’m not about to let you go running blind.” He flashed a smile at Ianto. “Mr. Jones?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I think you know what I’m going to need.”

Ianto’s lips twitched. “Always, sir.” The Welshman imperceptibly withdrew. Jack paced for a little; then resumed:

“If you guys just head for the hills – and hey, it’s not like Wales has a shortage of those – you’ll be delivering yourselves gift-wrapped to your enemy. Those things can track you, and it suits them to make you run, because they can always catch you. Keep the prey running; keep the prey scared. That was how Bilis beat us – putting us on the back-foot, conning us that we didn’t have time to think.” Jack looked steadily at the assembly. “What you need is a game-plan.”

“And I suppose you have one ready-made, Captain Harkness?”

“I have better than that, Angie.” Jack put his hand into his pocket, and then withdrew it. “I have this.”

“A _stop-watch_?”

“Knew a man once. Helluva guy. Could take your heart, Angie, with a smile and a nod – which was kind of unfair, him already having a spare and all. But that’s another story. Now, this guy made me feel a lot of things I’d never felt before, which was an achievement in itself. And among them was this: he could sometimes make me feel just a little bit dumb. Not a feeling I ever got used to… until I met Toshiko. And over the last few hours, I’ve been getting it a lot.”

He pressed the watch. “Simply put – if the minds in this room can’t find a viable way to hide from Goons United and tip off the other lucky winners on that list before this timer runs out, I don’t believe anyone can. So, brains in gear, people. Clock’s ticking.”

Angie scowled. “All you’ve got is a timer and a pep-talk?”

Jack smiled. “Not quite all.”

Ianto re-entered the Boardroom, carrying a tray laden with steaming mugs.

“Oh my.” Angie’s eyes widened as she caught the aroma. “There is a God.”

“Bloody hell,” whistled Owen. “Is that what I think it is?”

Jack nodded. “Uh-huh. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ianto Jones and his Emerald Blend – coffee’s DefCon One. The man himself is too modest to comment, but I’ve heard it said that he had to travel to the producers in person and go through a fast, a riddle-game, and a bare-knuckle pit-fight before he was judged worthy to export it.”

“I can well believe it,” breathed Stephen. “Hera’s perfume, indeed. May I?”

“By all means, Doctor Maturin. Get drinking. And get thinking.”

*****

Stephen suited the action to the word. After a few ecstatic swigs, he brightened.

“What is it, Dr. Maturin?” asked Hermione.

“A notion; nothing more.” Stephen waved his mug. “Perhaps the merest paronomasia, fit to be set alongside that chicanery for which Davy Hume so roundly lambasted the Continental Schools. And yet… in such a setting, and with such forces at our disposal… Our foes can hound us throughout Creation? Throughout every Creation, for all faith?”

“Seems that way,” said Angie.

“Then why not seek a bourne beyond Creation? Why not look to your Rift?”

“Wouldn’t work,” said Tosh, rather more loudly and quickly than usual. She too had been laying into the coffee with abandon; even Abaddon had not merited the Emerald Blend. “Definitely wouldn’t work. Almost certainly. It quite probably wouldn’t work.” She took another a swallow, and set her mug down carefully, eyes glowing. “It might work.”

“Uhh… Tosh, hate to rain on your parade, especially as it’s already soaked in caffeine, but your Commanding Officer reminds you that opening the Rift is a Bad Thing.”

“Big no-no, huh?” said Willow.

Ianto grimaced. “Spatiotemporal disruption - Cardiff in chaos – me shooting Owen. But it does have its down-side, too.”

“Heard that.”

“Good.”

“Bastard.”

“I’m not talking about _opening_ the Rift.” Tosh fluttered her hand irritably. “Since the End of Days, I’ve been working on ways to improve Rift stability. One of the more promising lines of thought was a plan to use our Manipulator to realign the Rift’s internal geometries. In theory, this would lead to the generation of an extra-dimensional Other-Space within the Rift itself. This construct, so far from destabilizing the Rift, would actually bridle its energies by focussing them on its own maintenance.”

“How does that work, then?” asked Owen.

“Like this.” Tosh picked up three coffee spoons from the tray. “Say the potential energy of each of these coffee spoons represents Rift energy. By itself, Rift energy only does one thing.” Tosh balanced a spoon on its end, and then released it to clatter on the table. “It expends itself –just as gravity makes the spoon fall down. But if you manipulate the internal dynamics of the Rift,” Tosh poised the spoons so that the bowls of each met at a central point, then left them balanced there, “the potential is used to maintain your own little wigwam. See?”

“Cool,” said Jack. “So, why haven’t you put this plan into action?”

Tosh’s face fell. “Even the simplest Rift manipulations need equations which are at the very limit of what I can do. I’ve practically had to invent three different sorts of geometry to get as far as we have. Maybe that old friend of yours could build the ‘Other-Space’, Jack. I’m not smart enough.” Tosh’s quiet voice made the last sentence sound like a dereliction.

“But what if you _didn’t_ have to work from scratch?” Angie leaned forward. “What if you could build on what someone else had already done?”

“How so?”

Angie rolled up her sleeve. “I’m going to have to interface with your computers. Is that ok?”

“Yes; of course.”

“Thanks.” Angie continued to talk, as silvery tendrils glistened from her fingers and worked their way into a nearby terminal. “Back on my Earth, there was a man called Hark. Think of him as the founder of Evil Masterminds Anonymous. Terror of the Occident, then Saviour of the World… and maybe the greatest mathematician my Earth ever produced.”

A screen kindled into life. Equations sprouted and unfurled across its field. Tosh gaped.

“Just before he disappeared in 1945, Hark was working on something. We don’t know for sure exactly what. My people tried to find out, but our Earth has something a lot like Torchwood too, and they got there first. What we salvaged suggests that he was investigating the possibilities of dimensional manipulation.

“The Authority didn’t have much use for his work. Who needs DIY reality-tweaking when you’ve got the Carrier? But I stored the data in my blood, just in case it ever came in handy.”

“Go you,” breathed Tosh. “This is glorious. It’s not exactly what I need, but as a base to build on….” She passed into a reverie for a moment, then shook her head in frustration. “It’s still not going to work. I have no idea what sort of processing power your Mr. Hark was expecting, but it must have been way beyond even what we have here in the Hub. With our present resources, real-time solutions for those equations just aren’t viable.”

“‘Real-time’,” murmured Willow. She drained her mug, and made eyes at Ianto for a refill. “What about _semi_ -real-time?”

Tosh’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t follow you.”

“Angie, you said your blood lets you make things? Anything you want?”

“Pretty much. I’m still on diminished capacity, though.”

“Could you make me an altar? Twelve cubits tall by seven deep?”

“I suppose so. Are you planning to _pray_ for solutions, Willow?”

“Kinda. I’ve got an idea.” Willow sat back. “If you can build an altar to my exact specifications, I may be able to consecrate it to Eryishon the Endless.”

“To who?”

“A Power over alterity and possibility. Altars properly hallowed in his name extend themselves across possible universes. Now, the culty types who are into that sort of thing usually do it just to impress the neighbours. ‘Hey, dude, my dark patron has _so_ much more occult bling than yours’. But I’m thinking that if we could key the configurations and reconfigurations of the altar to code a program…”

“…. then the altar becomes equivalent to a quantum computer,” Angie drained one mug, and reached for another. “Potential processing power increases exponentially…”

“…. so we can use it to solve the equations fast enough to restructure the internal geometries of the Rift…” Tosh was now bouncing up and down in a faintly unsettling way.

“…. and thus create an undetectable haven outside Reality, by dint of naught but applied intellect. A veritable Phrontisterion.” Stephen toasted Jack with his mug. “The solution found, sir, and not a minute lost.”

Jack grinned, and stopped the watch. “So, are you guys ready to get down and dirty?”

“Not quite yet, Captain Harkness.” Stephen frowned. “I fear there is another consideration…”

14\. Meetings of Minds

 _In which the past looms larger than any Abaddon._

Tosh glanced at Willow’s face. “Let me know if I’m going too fast for you.”

“I’ve yet to meet anyone who could do that. But if the pace is killing you, and you want to slow up, you only have to say.”

“Oh, I can do this all day. I just don’t know if you can handle it.”

Willow smiled, and looked back at her own computer. “Watch me.”

“Are those two fighting or flirting?” whispered Owen to Jack.

“I couldn’t say,” Jack leaned back against a table, “but it’s sweet to see. Is it just me, or is it really hot when two insanely smart women lock frontal lobes?”

“They are Alcides and Antaeus, _miranturque habuisse parem_.”

“Not as illuminating as you were hoping, Doctor Maturin, but it’s the thought that counts.”

“You are very good,” said Stephen absently. His pale eyes flickered across the room. “Mr. Jones no longer favours us with his presence, I find.”

“Ianto?” Jack’s tone was light. “Oh, he’s just down below, doing some chores. That battle left one mother of a mess.”

“Strange indeed if his documentary endeavours permit of any time for such exertion.”

Jack looked sharply at Stephen. “What do you mean by that?”

“Captain Harkness, your Hub has in recent hours found itself the host to a woman in whose veins every cell can play the Prometheus, to say nothing of two declared witches. It would be remiss in the extreme, sir, were these matters not relayed elsewhere with the utmost despatch.” Stephen sat back. “That, I suspect, is the nature of Mr. Jones’ present undertaking.”

“You got me. Ianto is sending a report up to London.” Jack grinned. “You’re a remarkable man, Dr. Maturin. And if you’re just a medic back home, then I’m a eunuch.”

Owen had drifted over to where Angie and Hermione were sitting together on the floor. Argent mist sparkled in the air above Angie’s outstretched hands, which slow, deliberate strokes from Hermione’s wand were sculpting into rococo shapes. The witch scowled at Owen as he approached.

“Don’t come too close. This is trickier than it looks.”

“Like I need procedural tips from a schoolgirl. Listen, sweetheart: I was fighting monsters before you were legal.”

“Big deal. So was I.”

“What the hell are you two making, anyway?”

“An interface,” answered Angie. “Occult paraphernalia don’t come with a wireless connection. There needs to be a way for that,” she nodded towards the altar that now took up most of the Hub’s free floor-space, “to talk to your Rift Manipulator, once it’s ready. We weren’t sure how to do it, at first, but then Hermione hit on the idea of moulding the connexion out of electro-responsive mist and breezes.”

“Suzie always used to say that you couldn’t solder an Abyss with Air.” Owen shook his head. “One more thing the silly cow got wrong.”

“How are Willow and Tosh coming with the equations?” asked Hermione.

“Pretty fair, as far as I can tell. Should be finished soon, if they don’t kill or shag each other first.”

“You on top of this, Hermione?” said Angie, “I need a caffeine boost.”

“No problem. I’ll keep it steady ’til you get back.”

“Thanks.”

Angie weaved through the clutter of the Hub. Owen watched her go. Hermione rolled her eyes.

“Yes – Angie does have nice legs. No – she is not available. And from what she’s been saying, I think her boyfriend could kick your head clean off. Any other questions, Dr. Harper?”

“Just one, then, princess.” Owen cocked his head towards Willow. “Why does California Dreaming over there scare you shitless?”

“I… I don’t know what you mean.”

Owen sighed. “There are three things in this world I’ve got a nose for: illness; fit women; and fear. They go together a lot more often than I’d like. You’re not scared of Weevils. You’re not scared of the Transvestite Assassins, Lord Anagram excepted. But you’re scared of her. Why?”

“‘This time’.”

“Do what?”

“The first wave of Death Eaters, back at Hogwart’s. We were defending ourselves as best we could. Then one of them put a _Sectumsempra_ right across the stomach of a Third Year. He hadn’t even meant to hit her; he was aiming at us. The poor kid was just standing there, blood welling across her robe and…

“… and Willow changed. She did… things to the Death Eater. To all the Death Eaters. Things I wish I didn’t remember.” Hermione stared into space for a moment; then focussed back on Owen. “And when she’d finished, she shook herself; looked around at what she’d done; and said: ‘How many died _this time_?’”

“Fucking hell.”

“Now do you have any more questions, Dr. Harper? No? Good.” Hermione turned back to the mist. “I’m afraid I have rather a lot of work to do.”

*****

“There was this girl I knew. Rock chick.”

Tosh snorted, but did not look up. “You sound like Jack. Friend of yours, was she?”

“Not really.” Willow had not taken her eyes off her own screen. “Kind of, I suppose, at the start. But she took up Nemesis-ing, which can strain a friendship, even if there aren’t kidnap and ransom issues as well. There were.

“Anyway, one day – this was before she picked up the keys to the Annakin-gdom, you understand - this gal mooches over to my best friend and says: ‘Hey, B., how about a friendly arm-wrestle?’ Well, my best friend is always up for a challenge, so a match it was. Seventeen minutes into the friendly arm-wrestle, the table collapsed.”

“And your point is?”

“My point is that we’ve established we’re pretty gosh darned Even Stevens in the computational stakes, and that we should probably take a break before we smash the furniture. Pax?”

Tosh giggled. “Even in the UK, no one says that anymore.”

“Someone should tell Hermione’s young men. Break?”

“Break.” Tosh sat back, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re a tough customer.”

“Takes one to know one.” Willow glanced around the room. “Your boss seems to be taking all this strangeness in his stride.”

“Many have tried to weird out Captain Jack Harkness. All have failed. I don’t think it’s physically possible.”

“Uh-huh. And you don’t want to let him down.”

“I don’t. I can’t. Not…”

“Not again?”

Tosh started. Willow sighed.

“No fun, is it, when you can’t look your friends in the eye anymore and say for sure you’ll never disappoint them?”

“No” Tosh swallowed. “I’ve made too many mistakes lately. Let’s just say Hephaestus wasn’t the only one who ended up on Lemnos. Temptations were offered which I ought have resisted, but I was stupid, and weak, and… and flattered, I suppose. Flattered that anyone could think I was worth tempting.” Her lips twisted. “When you’re someone like me, it’s heady to be centre-stage. Even if the play is _Faust_.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I doubt that.”

“Trust me, Toshiko. It may, I admit, take a marathon instead of a sprint for me to out-compute you…”

“Huh. In your dreams…”

“… but self-loathing’s a game where I’d pin you in a second. Back to the fray?”

“After you. You need the head-start.”

15\. Last Exit from Lemnos

 _In which occultism meets osculation, to memorable effect._

“OK.” Jack looked out across the Hub. “Interface ready, Angie?”

“Check.”

“Equations set for input, Tosh?”

“Check.”

“Then, Willow, the floor is yours.”

Slight before the great altar, the red-haired witch began to chant. Ianto, standing nearest, was nevertheless unable to make sense of what she said. The flow of syllables was supple; the timbre deeper and stronger than Willow’s conversational tones would ever have suggested. Ianto, obscurely reminded of a blind man he had seen once running his hands with meticulous élan over an urn in a museum, wondered whether her voice was somehow learning the altar.

Minutes passed in this vein. When change came, it was cruel. Willow began to shake. The words that had streamed smoothly before now hissed and spat out of her clenched throat. Ianto could see that she was bleeding, from the nose and the mouth. He started forward; then looked up at Jack, who shook his head. Ianto stood his ground.

Willow staggered and almost fell. Jack frowned. “Can you do this, Willow?”

Willow’s head was bowed. “Trying, but… so weak…nothing left…” She buckled to her knees. “… Nothing I can use…”

Jack turned to Hermione. “Can you help her?”

Hermione shrugged helplessly. “There’s nothing I can do. As I said, witches like her need to tap into power from outside to work big spells.”

“What sort of power?”

“Magical artefacts. Ley-lines. Life.”

“Life?”

“Yes. But something this big would take more life than anyone has to gi… um…Captain Harkness?”

Jack was already moving across the Hub. “It’s a dirty job in a dirty town,” he flashed a grin back at Hermione, “but someone’s gotta do it.”

“Captain Harkness, that is a _really bad idea_.”

“Probably. Willow?”

Willow squinted blearily up at him. “Huh?”

“Just so you’re aware, this is for Queen and Country.” Jack leaned in. “Mostly.”

*****

“You know,” said Owen reflectively, “if our beloved Institute ever goes out of its collective tree and lets me write my memoirs, The Time Jack Harkness Saved the Day by Playing Tonsil-Tennis with a Lesbian Witch from Another Universe will _definitely_ get its own chapter heading. Maybe even its own title page.”

“Mmm.”

“You could at least pretend you give a shit what I’m saying, Tosh.”

“Hmm? Oh. Sorry, Owen.” Tosh reluctantly tore her eyes away from the altar. “It’s just… it’s so beautiful.”

“No accounting for taste. Does my bloody head in looking at it.”

“But that’s the neat thing, isn’t it? You can’t ever see all of it, because it’s real in more ways than it has any right to be.” Tosh sighed. “It’s like being a kid again, and realizing that the set of prime numbers is infinite, and that there’s all this irreducible, quirky uniqueness, just going on forever…”

“I work with this woman.” Owen shook his head. “Kill me now.”

“I’ll tell Ianto to put it on his ‘to-do’ list,” said Jack. He looked back at Willow. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Stronger. Thanks again.”

“You’re still pumping mo-jo into this thing, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting you as much. Why is that?”

“It’s like static and dynamic friction. This sort of working takes a lot more power to start than it does to maintain. It’s still a strain to hold it, but nothing I can’t handle.”

“Your eyes, though… that can’t be normal.”

“Normal walked out into the snow back in High School, when I said I’d help this new kid with her homework. It was heard to remark that it might be some time.” Willow’s brow knitted. “Jack?”

“Uh-huh?”

“What _are_ you? Besides a really, really good kisser?”

“Wouldn’t I like to know.” Jack clambered to his feet. “OK, kids, enough with taking in the occult eye-candy. There’s still a job to do.”

*****

“Uh-oh,” said Tosh.

Ianto looked over her shoulder. “‘Uh-oh’ how?”

“The interface isn’t working. I can’t code the equations into the altar.”

“Why not?”

“The magic and the tech don’t quite mesh,” called over Angie from another terminal. “We can’t get them to talk to one another.”

“There is a need, perhaps, for some mediating agent?” asked Stephen. “A factor fitted alike to the ways of natural philosophy and of magic?”

“Could be…” said Willow.

“Then if I might be permitted to try a hypothesis?”

Jack spread his hands. “Knock yourself out.”

“Angie, may I take the liberty of requesting your presence at the altar?”

Angie giggled, and moved away from her station. “But we’ve only just met…”

“Let us pray that the alliance may be kept from my Diana.” Stephen took a position next to her. “Present your arm, please.”

“OK. What are you going to do?”

“Little more than a small letting.” Stephen drew the tip of a scalpel across Angie’s finger. “Now be so good as to sprinkle some drops upon the altar.”

Angie complied. Tosh gasped.

“It’s operational. The interface is working.” She looked at Stephen. “How did you know?”

Stephen shrugged. “A term common to the two systems we here invoke. Science demands a medium apt for its manipulations; the altar, like altars the world over, craves blood-sacrifice. Blood that is the very quintessence of science, therefore, was the desideratum.”

“Wow. Cybersemiotics. Not bad for a man who says he’s still in mourning for the luminiferous ether.” Tosh turned back to her workstation. “I’m running the equations… now.”

Dizziness assaulted all present, as reality Jacob’s Laddered to Tosh’s key-strokes and the Rift Manipulator’s rising hum. When the vertiginous moment passed, Eryishon’s Altar had gone. An oblong of light, the size of a doorway, shone in its place.

“What happened to Death By Ikea?” Owen asked.

“It’s been shifted to inside the Other-Space,” replied Hermione. “What Dr. Maturin called the Phrontisterion. The place beyond that doorway, inside the Rift.”

“The place you guys are planning to hide in?”

“That’s the one,” Tosh stood up and walked over to her Captain. “Time for us to go. And in light of what Stephen said earlier, Jack, um… I’m going to need your coat.”

“Cool,” Jack smiled down at the diminutive scientist. “Will you need my clothes, boots, and motorcycle too?”

“Jack…”

“OK, OK,” Jack eased the greatcoat around Tosh’s small shoulders. She scowled as it flapped to the floor.

“I look ridiculous.”

“You look fine. Period military suits you.” Jack straightened a lapel. “Come back with it or come back on it, Tosh.”

Tosh scraped together a smile. “I’ll do my best.”

“Never doubted it.”

The men of Torchwood watched Tosh lead the small group of heavily laden planar expatriates through the shining doorway. As it narrowed and disappeared behind them, Owen looked over at Jack.

“Do you really think she’ll pull through, Jack? Don’t get me wrong, Tosh is as smart as they come, but when all’s said and done, she’s just a pint-sized techie. Any one of those things could eat her for breakfast.”

“Didn’t I make a rule after the Brecon Beacons that no one was to use that phrase ever again?”

“Twat moment. My bad. Point stands.”

“Tosh is Tosh. I’ve never seen the lock she can’t pick or the code she can’t crack. _Blitzkrieg_ is one thing, but whoever’s behind this wants to be a wise-ass. Did he ever pick the wrong playing-field.”

“Fair enough.”

“If _I’m_ ever targeted by a league of trans-dimensional assassins, sir, can I have your shirt?”

“You’ll never know, Ianto, until it happens.”

16\. The Thought Gang

 _In which cartography exceeds the bounds of propriety_.

“So, how did you guys get to me, then?” asked Marshall, putting down a small black metal cylinder and picking up a large purple crystal instead.

“From the Phrontisterion, accessing alternate realities is quite easy,” explained Angie. “Surprisingly so, in fact. Even without the teleport embargo, Tosh tells us that from her Earth it’s usually pretty much impossible to reach any other.”

Tosh nodded. “We think that imposing order on the chaos of the Rift has opened up some possibilities that wouldn’t otherwise be available. We can’t go anywhere we like, though.”

“Yeah,” interjected Willow. “Lots of Earths are too _Qareen gl’ jar –_ Endel _-_ Chi for something like ‘far away’ – to reach easily from here. The Authority’s Earth is one. Hellmouth Central is another. But yours was doable.”

“So, I’m on that list too?”

Willow exuded sympathetic glum. “Afraid so.”

“That makes no sense. Why should some multi-planar mastermind be gunning for me? I’m just …”

“… someone’s little tame techie?” Tosh sat back. “Join the club. I can’t make silk from my voice or guns from my blood either, Marshall. Neither can Stephen.”

“What about the other guys on the list? Why aren’t they here too?”

“Couldn’t get to any of ’em,” said Willow. “Their Earths are too far away. Like I said, we have our limits.”

“There’s another difficulty, too,” Tosh tried to hitch her coat so that it did not fan out around her chair, and gave up. “Sending people out from the Phrontisterion into a given reality is unproblematic, but bringing them _back_ makes a sort of stress-fracture at the point on that Earth where they leave it. We suspect that the Mook Brigade can sense those fractures, just like they can detect the people on the list. They might be able to use them to follow us.”

“Is that why you were so interested in the security of Cell 47? Because you wanted the place you took me from to be as safe as possible once you left the fracture?”

“Yeah. We weren’t sure how to manage that at first. It was Stephen’s idea to finesse you into capturing us and putting us slap-bang in the sort of place we needed.”

“I’m still not seeing how you found me, though.”

Stephen stirred. “Miss Granger’s map proved efficacious in that regard.”

Marshall looked puzzled. “I thought you said that it only showed people in her school.”

“It did,” said Tosh. “That was before she installed an upgrade.”

“The Marauder’s Map XP.” Willow smiled. “With some of my know-how, and a lot of hers, Hermione didn’t have much trouble generalizing the algothaumarithm. Now it can potentially find anyone, anywhere. If, um, you’ve got the space to house it. It’s rather big now. And, er, growing.”

“Hence the machete?”

“Hence the machete. I hope it hasn’t eaten her.”

“That’s a surprise,” Angie frowned, “from the way you usually talk to her. You _could_ go a little easier on the kid, you know.”

“Yeah, I could. But I’m not gonna.”

“Even if you don’t like her…”

“I like her a lot. That’s why I do it.”

Angie looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

Willow pursed her lips. “In your Authority, you’ve got a guy who does magic my way? Telling the world how it’s going to be, without a wand in sight?”

“Yeah. The Doctor. Why?”

“Is he the kind of guy you would characterize as a poster-boy for mental stability?”

“Well… no. Really no. About as no as it’s possible for no to get.”

Willow nodded. “Do you see? Hermione’s people didn’t just let the Old Magic die. They killed it. Ensorcelled themselves with Memory Charms so that no one would ever try to bring it back. And with good reason.”

Willow tapped the table restlessly. “I lost it in Hogwart’s. Just for a moment. But with the Old Magic, that’s all it takes. And then… I combed my hair with the breath I stole from a Death Eater’s lungs. I ran mud through another one’s veins and giggled when he stroked. Hermione’s a great kid. That’s why I can’t let her like me.”

“Hello, everyone,” Hermione breezed into the room. “Should my ears be burning? I’ve brought back the machete.”

“I hope there’s space,” said Marshall. “There’s an awful lot of widgetry around here. And that’s me who’s saying that.”

Hermione shrugged. “This is the Armoury. Tosh insisted that we bring all this stuff from the Hub, just in case it was useful.”

“I’m not complaining.” Marshall reached across the table. “Wow. Is that a Neutron Flow Reversion Unit? I’ve always wanted to see one of those.”

Tosh passed him an octagonal box. “Be my guest.”

“Cool. Thanks.” Marshall scratched his head. “I think we’re losing sight of the big picture, though. What _is_ it that we all have in common? Apart from being really smart, obviously. I mean, I don’t want to blow my own trumpet here or anything, but as far as you all are concerned, this whole set-up speaks for itself. After all, only a bunch of incredibly smart people could have…” Marshall’s voice faltered “…built… this…. Um, guys?”

“Yes, Marshall?” prompted Tosh.

“I don’t want to alarm you or anything, but I just had a _really_ nasty thought.”

“Indeed, Agent Flinkman.” The voice that spoke from the doorway, making the assembled company look up, was a resonant and cultured one. “But, I’d wager, a very accurate one. Good for you; it’s quite an achievement,” the tall figure stepped into the room, “and for that, I’ll kill you last.”

  
17\. The Storming of the Castle in the Air

 _In which a plan comes together._

The figure was that of a tall, thin old man in a robe, with untidy white hair and a long crooked nose. Hermione gaped as she saw him.

“Professor?”

“An understandable misapprehension, Miss Granger, but not so.” The old man’s eyes twinkled indulgently at the young witch. “Five points from Gryffindor. And what else? Oh yes, pray pardon my abstraction. _Crucio_.”

He stepped into the room, smiling benignly as Hermione fell convulsing to the floor. A flick of his hand plucked Stephen into the air when the doctor rose to help her, and hurled him into a corner.

“You know this guy?” hissed Angie.

“No.” Hermione wiped the blood from her bitten lip, and stared at the intruder. “I know the face. But the man it belongs to is dead.”

The old man beamed at Willow’s sharp intake of breath. “Revelation dawns upon Miss Rosenberg. But is it, one is bound to wonder, a false dawn? After all, to take the form of those we can never see again is really a rather paltry trick, one to gull none but the culpably credulous.” The old man was gone. An Asian woman in late middle age, blood blazoned on her forehead, stood in his place. Marshall felt Tosh stiffen at his side, as the bloodied newcomer smiled. “ _Toshiko wa shitte imasu_.”

Marshall swallowed. “You’re the one behind this, aren’t you? The thing that hacked the hive-minds?”

“Yeah.” A short, slim blonde woman in a Union Jack T-shirt puffed on a dog-end. Angie shut her eyes, and shuddered. “That’s me. Locked away in the Silent Realm, between the Earths, by the nameless bringer of the storm. Until you bunch of mugs let me out, that is.”

Tosh was on her feet. “You planned this. All of it. You manipulated us. Tricked us into building the key to your prison.”

“Guilty as charged.” The blonde woman examined her cigarette critically. “Bit of a doss, really. Your shape of mind is so easy to detect, you see. Repeating _ad nauseam -_ across spaces and times – always changing, always the same. The one who dots the ‘i’s and crosses the ‘t’s, and sears the stumps on the Hydra’s heads. There beneath Cnossos, in the reeking dark, with your twine and bright sterile little wits, the poor girl discarded when her usefulness was done. Your sort can’t _do_ anything, that’s your problem. Action needs the heroes you’re there to help, never to be. All you have is planning, and building, and tidying up.”

Angie edged towards the exit. Lightning crackled from the blonde woman’s slender fingers and slammed her into a wall.

“You’ll move when you’re told, Angie love. Trying to forget you’re just a machine again, pet? Can’t have our utensils getting ideas above their station, can we now?

“So, like I said, it was all a piece of piss. Sending in the wolves to make you do what came naturally – run and hide and think yourselves to death. Hijacking transport magic to make sure you all ended up together where the witless wonders of Torchwood were fiddling with the Rift like a virgin with a bra-strap. I’m grateful you made the logistics there so easy. Misfiring spells are _much_ more convincing for that sort of shit than a teenaged arsonist and her chemistry experiments. Oh – thinking that you can pull that gun without me seeing, Dr. Maturin?”

Electricity crackled again. The fowling piece fell from Stephen’s numbed hands.

“Not your smartest call. And so, here we are.” The blonde woman spread her arms. “Once I take control of your Phrontisterion I get to go free, with a hundred Earths my oyster. As a bonus, you get to end your pointless parasitic lives. Really, I’m doing the multiverse a favour.”

“How cool. Not just a planar jail-break, but a plan to delete the ‘Smart Sidekick’ meme from God’s own mind. It’s great to meet a sicko with some aspiration.” Willow pointed her finger at the intruder. “I’m gonna make a whole new Hell to put you in.”

The Phrontisterion shook. Willow hastily dropped her hand. The blonde chuckled. “I don’t think so. Maybe you or Angie _might_ have had a chance against me. After all, you’ve both gone toe-to-toe with gods. But the real kicker is that you’ve built a place where neither of you can. If you withdraw enough power to strike me down, or Angie redeploys her liquid tech to whip me up some grief, what makes this place survivable for the likes of you will blink out in a heartbeat, and you lot will drop howling into the Rift. It’ll all come down like the house of cards it is.” The blonde grinned. “And not a Jack in sight.

“So all I’m _really_ up against is a wannabe Q, a time-lost twitcher, the Jackette in the Jacket, and a schoolgirl. I don’t know why you’re still jabbering in Latin, Hermione. Some sort of mind-control magic, isn’t it? Mentalism hasn’t got a cat in Hell’s chance of working on me.”

Hermione continued to chant, her face set. The woman in the T-shirt rolled her eyes, and took another puff of her cigarette. “So, you can see why this isn’t exactly a brown knickers moment for yours truly. You’ve built a better mouse-trap for yourselves than anything I could have designed.

“There’s no saviour here. No Chosen Several to give me a pasting with their fists or feet or wands. No Everman to drown me in his glut of life. No capital punishment from the God of the Cities. Not even a commendable standard of gunnery. Just you.” She dropped the cigarette, and neatly ground it out. “And you don’t have what it takes.”

“Really.” Tosh moved forward to block her path. “Let’s test that theory, shall we?”

The blonde laughed in her face. “You can’t be serious. Of all this choral ode to inadequacy, you’re the most absurd. A second-order flunky. A side-kick’s side-kick. Strutting around in your borrowed robes, thinking that they make you a hero.”

She leant in. Tosh could feel the breath on her cheek.

“I can see inside your head, little Miss Sato. Do you know what I see? I see that copy of _A Tale of Two Cities_ you read and read until the pages fell out. I see your dreams of being the one who gets to do a far, far, better thing, when all you really are is the one who sits in the house and listens to the foot-falls of other people’s lives. The witness to the lives you never led.”

Toshiko held her gaze. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that is all I am. But I’m not so sure. You see, I’ve learnt an interesting secret.”

“Really?” The blonde smirked. “Do tell.”

“I’ll have to whisper it.”

“I’m all ears. Apart from the bits which are Dark God Ascendant, obviously.”

Tosh put her lips to the other’s ear, and murmured: “The thing about _life_ is, that if you hang around people with a lot of it, it rubs off on you. And also, funnily enough, on clothes. _Now._ ”

Willow spoke a word. Or (to be more accurate) a Word. Marshall dimly sensed that it was the sort of Word you would need at least six weeks training in thinking at unusual angles to _hear_ properly, let alone speak aloud.

On Toshiko’s shoulders the coat blazed like the death of suns.

18\. Borrowed Robes

 _In which a redundancy of Exposition Fairies proves advantageous._

The blonde barely had time to open her mouth before the light pouring from the Coat rubbed out her end of the room, leaving only a blinding blank.

Marshall’s jaw dropped. “You were _wearing_ a weapon of mass destruction? But how?”

“Honestly, it’s really quite simp…”

“… a matter not devoid of instruct…”

“You see, it was all kinda…”

There was a moment of embarrassed silence. Angie cleared her throat: “Sorry. I guess we’re all used to hogging the mike, when a situation like this crops up.”

“Guys…” Tosh’s head was averted, as light continued to pour from her small form into the space that contained their adversary. “We really don’t know what it takes to kill this thing. Could you possibly work _while_ you exposit?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Marshall’s gaze raked the Armoury. “OK: step by step. I know two things. Firstly, you guys have been less than candid about _everything_ that went down at the Hub. There’s something you haven’t been telling me. Secondly, that gizmo by Dr. Maturin’s hand is some sort of containment device. Could you pass it over?”

“You are quite correct, Mr. Flinkman.” Stephen flipped the small metal disc to Marshall, who caught and began to examine it. “It was patent to me from the first that our adversary, in admitting but one mode of escape, intended all along that we should exploit the Rift. It was expedient, then, that we should seem to acquiesce in its design, yet turn it to our own ends.”

“Classic bait and switch. Cool.” Marshall fiddled with the disc, glancing quickly up at the other end of the room. The light was still strong, but by no means as blinding as before. “Angie… is there any way you could use your nanites to soup up this device’s output without blowing us all to Kingdom Come? And maybe you could make a start on explaining your _real_ plan?”

Angie nodded. “There.” Silver glittered in the air around the disc. “This is going to eat through that thing’s power cell like nobody’s business, but while it lasts, you’ll have ‘Storm Door’- quality containment. A Majestic-class superhuman couldn’t dent it. As for the plan, well, like Stephen said, it was clear that our enemy wanted to split all us mega-minds away from our protectors. Get us to build an inter-planar key and hide there, without an inconvenient quantity of bad-asses to protect it. So…”

“You worked out a way to smuggle a bit of bad-ass in. Hmm.” Marshall frowned. At the other end of the room, the light was waning. “But how did you manage that? You can’t work God-Buster magic in this place without breaking it. That thing said so.” He clicked his teeth with his tongue. “Rats. If it can teleport or go insubstantial, then this trick I’m brewing up really won’t work.”

“You’re right. God-buster magic was a no-no.” Willow scratched her nose. “But _sympathetic_ magic is easy. Give me a nail and I can link to a hand. Give me a coat, and I can link to a Harkness.” She stared at the disc. Cabalistic symbols writhed for a moment across its surface. “ _Webs of guile - about, above, below_. Spirit bindings are pretty easy, too. If you trap something with that gizmo, Marshall, no fancy tricks are gonna get it out.”

“Cool.” Marshall ran his hands over the disc again, tweaking here, adjusting there. “But what was the point of forging a link to Tosh’s Captain?”

“Captain Harkness is a reservoir for power.” Hermione’s gaze was fixed on the end of the room. Beyond Tosh, who had slumped to one knee, an outline emerged from the ebbing light. “Power which the kind of entropic entity that gets exiled to the Rift can’t handle. It wouldn’t go to him, so we brought him to it.” She swallowed. “Oh my. I think I liked it better as the blonde”

Marshall looked over his shoulder. He revised his prior conviction that Arvin Sloane’s look of polite enquiry was the scariest thing he could imagine. Then he tossed the disc. Their enemy’s triumphant hiss, as it darted at the fallen Toshiko, was cut off abruptly by the cerulean bubble that had cocooned it.

“Torchwood containment device,” Tosh murmured, as she struggled back to her feet. “Very smart, Marshall, but I’m afraid that it won’t hold something like that for long.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Marshall grinned smugly. “That’s _my_ contribution to this little brains’ trust. Torchwood may have the edge over APO in the big stuff, Toshiko, but what you’ve got there is a _gadget_. And when you’ve spent a large chunk of your professional life adapting the designs of a fifteenth century Italian technomage, modifying alien tech on the fly is a snap. Mr. Entity?”

The bubble bulged furiously, but no avail.

“I’m pretty sure that the field blocks sound waves, but on the other hand, a mind-reader can probably pick up what I’m saying. I’m Marshall Flinkman. I’m not Ariadne. I’m not whoever helped Hercules with the Hydra…”

“Iolaus, my dear,” said Stephen.

“…I’m not Iolaus. But it _might_ help you to think of me as the Sugar Plum Fairy…”

The azure field began, slowly but surely, to shrink.

“…because I just turned this gizmo into the Nutcracker.”

“That,” said Tosh, “is quite astonishingly neat.”

“I do my best.” Marshall frowned. “But I do have one last question.”

“Fire away.”

“That thing is telepathic yeah? Limited range, obviously, unless you’re a big fat, hack-tastic hive-mind, but still a reader?”

“So it averred,” said Stephen.

“Then why didn’t it know what you were planning once it was in the room with you?”

Hermione smiled. “Selective mind-shielding. It’s called Occlumency. I shielded all of us back in the Boardroom at the Hub, when Dr. Maturin deduced that we were being set up, and we started formulating the realplan. I started shielding you, Mr. Flinkman, as soon as it looked like you were about to rumble us. That thing could see that I was doing mind-control. It just didn’t realize whose mind I was controlling.”

“Smooth.” Marshall inspected the bubble, which was now about the size of a basket-ball. “Think it’s done?”

Angie shrugged. “Only one way to find out…”

Marshall switched off the field. “Ew. Very…. yucky. I think that we can safely judge ourselves the winners.”

“I think so too.” Willow snapped her fingers. The remains immolated. “Back home, I know a blonde who would have a killer pun prepped for just this moment.”

“As do I,” said Stephen, “though in sober truth, it is more likely that the pun would have come to him belated, and so left the poor fellow brooding on the wit that might have been.”

“Never mind.” Marshall grabbed a Thermos, and held it high. “Ladies and Gentleman, I think that we should toast the Thought Gang. No job too big; no exposition too complicated. Now, I want to see if Torchwood caffeine lives up to the hype…”

Epilogue

  
“So the Phrontisterion is gone, and the wise-ass is a cinder. Stephen really knew what he was thinking when he named your hidey-hole. I guess you could say Dr Maturin is a man with his head in the _Clouds_ , huh?”

“First Milton, now Aristophanes,” Tosh nestled down again into her leather coat, as the dawn wind blew shrill across Roald Dahl Plass. “I’m impressed, Jack.”

“Never really rated that one, myself.” Jack continued to gaze skywards. “Bombed on its opening night. And man, were those costumes ever hard to get out of.”

Tosh shot a sharp glance up at her commanding officer, which skittered harmlessly as always off the bright opaque smile.

“Do you think that… thing is gone for good?” asked Angie.

“Hope so,” said Jack. “Doubt it. Stuff on that level is cosmic herpes. You think you’re free and clear, when all of a sudden there’s that tell-tale tingle and… But you’ve definitely broken its power for a good long time.”

“And we’ve achieved so much else as well,” Tosh enthused. “My collaboration with Willow has really pushed back the boundaries of our understanding of the mathematics of the Rift.”

“Ah, yes,” Owen’s tone was calculated innocence. “All that time the two of you spent shut up together in Jack’s office after you got back. Going over each other’s figures.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to imply, Owen.”

“Then why are you blushing, princess?”

“Guys, guys,” Jack’s smile was more than usually blinding, “let’s just agree that all our guests have given us something special. Intelligence. Camaraderie. Office Supplies.”

“A photocopier, a vacuum-cleaner, and three fire-extinguishers, to be precise. Also four HD televisions, two washing machines, and a new microwave.” Ianto smiled apologetically at Angie. “In retrospect, you probably shouldn’t have told Gwen what your nanotech can do.”

Angie smiled back. “It was my pleasure. And frankly, it was a nice change of pace. Usually when you tell people you can make anything, they start asking for the cool stuff. Munitions, artificial lungs, that kind of thing. Gwen’s requests were a lot more…”

“….domestic?” offered Ianto.

“Uh-huh. I hope her boyfriend likes that little blow-torch she got me to make him for his _crème_ _brulée_ ”

“Gwen.” Jack sighed. “I’ve met gods, and angels, and devils that have scared me less than that girl’s grip on the practicalities.” He looked over to Angie. “Are they nearly here?”

Angie nodded. “Yeah. It was a tricky journey, though. They’d never have found it without that beacon Tosh helped me build. This part of the Bleed is a real mess. Almost like a…”

“Battlefield?” Jack nodded. “You’re right. There was a War.”

“Who won?”

“Everyone lost.”

Owen frowned at Angie. “Now that the teleport embargo’s gone, I don’t see why you didn’t just let Willow banish you back to your home Earth, like she did with herself and everyone else. It would have been a sight quicker.”

“Probably. But ‘reverting to planar ground-state’ sounded a little bit freaky. One Magical Interdimensional Mystery Tour was enough for me, thank you. Besides, my way’s cooler. Speaking of which….”

Above crepuscular Cardiff, the sky split open.

“… here’s my ride.”

“Wow.” Tosh craned her neck at the impossible view. “Is that the Carrier?”

“Either that,” Jack threw back his head, “or Anglesey’s taken up hang-gliding.”

“Fat chance explaining _that_ away,” breathed Owen. “There isn’t enough Retcon in the world.”

“Cleared it with London in advance. We’ll chalk it up to ‘UNIT manoeuvres’,” said Jack. “Now, Angie, let me help you out of that dressing-gown. Which is one of those phrases you can never get tired of saying.”

Ianto watched as his own reflection was born in the bright metallic sheen that bloomed across the tall woman’s skin. She caught him staring, and smiled.

“How do I look?”

Ianto swallowed. “Very beautiful. Very human.”

“How eloquent;” Angie kissed him gently on the cheek, “I can see why they call this the Land of Song. Thanks again.”

The Torchwood team watched as she receded upwards into a gleaming silvery point beside the bulk of the Carrier. Owen shivered.

“Kind of makes you feel a bit small and pointless, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tosh continued to look up. “It’s all a matter of perspective, really. It’s like Dr. Maturin told me about bees: you have to see the small in the big, and the big in the small. Some of them are there to work, and some of them are there to watch.‘There are those to whom it is allotted to guard the gates’. Just like us.”

The heavens swallowed and were still.

“That’s why our symbol is a honeycomb.”

*****

Jack Bristow, drafting a report on recent events, was not in the best of humours. Explaining how two unarmed civilians had extracted an agent from the heart of APO had been the easy part. The bit with the siege by huge slathering mutant cockroaches and men in dresses, he decided, could wait until after lunch-time.

Half-way to the cafeteria, he heard crashing chords from Marshall’s office. He poked his head around the door.

“Oh. Hi, Mr. Bristow. Is the music too loud? I can easily turn it down.”

“No need, Marshall, I was just intrigued. Wouldn’t have had you pegged for a Wagnerian.”

“I like the leitmotifs.”

“The whats?”

“Little, recurring themes in the music, that come up again and again. Always changing; always the same. They aren’t particularly expansive or important. But without them, the fat lady would never get to sing. Does that make sense?”

“Kind of. Anyway, Marshall, it’s good to have you back.”

“Good to be back, sir. Back in the normal, everyday world of, er….” Marshall tailed off.

“Trying to think of a way to end that sentence that doesn’t involve clairvoyant Renaissance men or huge spinning balls of crimson doom above Chechnya, Marshall?”

“Yeah, sir. It isn’t coming.”

“Take it easy,” Jack headed away down the corridor. “I’m going to lunch. Do you want me to pick you up a drink?”

“Yeah… about that, sir… do you think that we could look into making better coffee?”

“Can coffee _be_ better than what we’ve got in the cafeteria?”

“Trust me;” said Marshall Flinkman reverently, “it can.”


End file.
